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THE 



SMOKED YANK. 



BY 

Melvin Grigsby. 



SECOND EDITION. ILLUSTRATED 



CHICAGO : 
REGAN PRINTING COMPANY. 

1891 






COPYRIGHT 1888, By MELVIN GRIGSBY. 



BE«JU£St OF 
mU WALTER R. STEINBR 



2)ebicatlon. 



V 

J) Zo tbe IReal Cbivalrg of tbe Soutb, 

^^ tbe olD "Buntfes" an& "Tllnclee" anD Dalocous HJoung /Oben, 

<i wbo 60 generously anD bravelg, 

at tbe risk ot Cruel punisbment and sometimes of Xlfe, 
^ JeD anO MarmeO ano fbii) anD ©ulDeD 

BscapeD lanton ipcljsoners, ^' 

Bs a tlohen of ©ratltuDe tbls Xlttle Dolume 
is JTenOerlB 5>eDlcateD 



aSs tbe Butbor. 



PUBLISHER'S NOTICE. 



Not long ago the publisher of this book and several others met in the 
office of Mr. Grigsby. The subject of our conversation was the reviving 
interest in war stories and reminiscences, evidenced by the prominence 
given to that class of literature by all the leading magazines of the day. 
Incidentally, Mr. Grigsby remarked that he had, in manuscript, a book 
written several years ago, narrating, what his sons called, his ' ' Adventures 
in the War," which he designed, sometime, to have published in pamphlet 
form for distribution among his relatives and friends. 

Having previously heard that his experiences as a soldier were of an un- 
usually varied and interesting character, my curiosity was aroused, and, 
yielding to my solicitations, Mr. Grigsby finally permitted me to see his 
manuscript. A careful reading convinced me that were it published in 
book form it would meet with a favorable reception, not only by the 
relatives and personal friends of the author, but also by thousands of 
veterans and sons of veterans, by all, in fact, who take an interest in the 
stirring incidents of our civil war. 

Frankly believing this, I persuaded Mr. Grigsby to have the book pub- 
lished under the title of the " Smoked Yank," and agreed to be responsible 
for the success of the enterprise. Whether or not my judgment was well- 
founded is for the public to determine. 

To my request for a preface, the author replied : ' ' You have assumed 
the responsibility, and if you deem that explanations or apologies are due 
the reader, n}.ake them yourself. " The publisher has none to offer. 

Sam T. Clover. 



PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION 

The real preface to this book is contained in the first .^hapter. This 

Second Edition, with Illustrations, goes out because the firsr; was received 

with favor by the public, and the Author is daily in receipt of orders which 

he cannot fill. 

The Author. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER I. PAGE. 

Tells how this Book came to be Written, - - - - - 13 

CHAPTER II. 
I Rebel in order to Fight Rebellion—" The Girl I Left Beliind Me, " - 17 

CHAPTER III. 
Camp Washburn — I get my Name in Print — Privates eat Sandwiches in 
tlie Rain while Officers have Champagne under Shelter — Benton 
Barracks — On the March — I make a rash Promise, - - 25 

CHAPTRR IV. 
Helena — A Slave Owner in a bad fix — 'Forninst the Government" — 
Plantation Records — Memphis — Prohibition in the Army — Helping 
a Friend to Beat the Quartermaster, - - - - - 31 

CHAPTER V. 
Vicksburg — Another Case of Beating U. S. — A Runaway Horse carries 
me into Close Quarters— Jackson and Canton — Have Trouble with 
Uncle Tommy and leave the Regiment, - - - - 38 

CHAPTER VI. 
I get a Leave of Absence and have some Fim with the Boys — Helping 
Planters to Market Cotton — "An Atheist's Laugh a Poor Exchange 
for Deity Offended, " — Captured by Guerillas, - - - 46 

CHAPTER VII. 
Samples of Chivalry — Joking with a Jolmny — Helping to fill up the 
Sets — A wearisome March without Food, except for Reflection — 
Too angry to eat, - - • - - - 56 

CHAPTER VIII. 
" To the Victors belong the Spoils" — I lose my Suspenders — A jolly 
Rebel Rascal — A Captain of the Horse Marines, - - - 68 

CHAPTER IX. 
Moved to Cahaba, Alabama — A little Leaven for the Loaf — I Borrow 
Books, write Notes, and become Sentimental — A promising Ro 
mance nipped in the Bud, - - - - - - 75 



CHAPTER X. 
Cahaba Revisited in 1884— A Delightful Ride— The Freedmeu of the 
South —A Deserted Village — An old Mansion — Mrs. Gardner, "the 
Friend of the Unfortunate," - - - - - - 80 

CHAPTER XI. 
We leave Cahaba — A Song Battle— "Let the Damn Yanks Starve" — 
We enter Andereonville — Walking Mummies and Smoked Skele- 
tons — Discouraging Prospects, - - - - - - 90 

CHAPTER XII. 
"Answer at Roll-Call, draw Rations and fight Lice" — Scenes at the 
Dead-Line, - ----- 98 

CHAPTER XIII. 
Extra Rations — Flanking-Out — Cooked Rations — The Huckster's Cry 
and the Peddler's Call — The Plymouth Pilgrims — Dead Yankees 
become Articles of Merchandise^! buy a Corpse and tapce pure 
Air — Repeating, - - ----- - loi 

CHAPTER XIV. 
The Raiders — "Limber Jim " ^ — The Regulators — Execution of the 
Raiders, - - - - - - - - 114 

CHAPTER XV. 
Escapes— Blood-Hounds — Tortures — Digging Tunnels A Benedict Ar- 
nold — Shooting a Cripple — The Hospital — SickCall— A Small-Pox 
Scare, - - - - - - - - - 124 

CHAPTER XVI. 
Condition of the Prison in July and August — Rebel Statistics — Why we 

were not Exchanged — Andersonville Revenged — This a Republic ! - 124 

CHAPTER XVII. 
Outlines of a Picture. ----... 142 

CHAPTER XVIII 
How I Manage to Live — My Bunk-Mate goes to the Hospital — I secure 
a Corner Lot and get into Trade — Sherman's Fine-Tooth Combs 
and Scissors — Removal to Florence, South Carolina, - - 146 

CHAPTER XIX. 
I go for Water at.d Escape — A Faithful People — A Novel Character — 

A Comical Hero, -.--... 156 

CHAPTER XX. 
"Hell Hath no Fury like a Woman Scorned "—A Badly Scared Negro 
— Captured by a Fourteen-year-old Boy — In a Felon's Cell, - - 166 

CHAPTER XXI. 
Another Stockade — A Meaner Man than Wirz — Out on Parole — The 
Smuggled Steer — Notes from a Diary, . . . . 177 



CHAPTER XXII. 
Parole of Honor Played Out— A Scheme for Escape — All is fair in Love 
and War — Bribing a Yankee with a Rebel's Money — I go after 
Shakes and do not Return, - - - - - - 190 

CHAPTER XXIII. 
Blood-Hounds in Sight — Wake u]> the Wrong Family— Gentlemen 
(very little) of Color — I play that lam a Slave Owner and talk with 
Rebel Soldiei-s, - - - - • - - - 199 

CHAPTER XXIV. 
A Pressing Invitation — I Paddle a Canoe— Am caught in a "Niggah 
Qua'tah"^A Chivalrous Lady pleads my Cause — A Night in a 
Swamp, -------.. 205 

CHAPTER XXV. 

I steal Mules and take a Ride — A well laid Scheme " Gang Aft Aglee" 
Some Dangei'ous Places — Crossing the Salkahatchie, - - 217 

CHAPTER XXVI. 
"The Girl I Left Behind Me "—The grand old Flag and the Boys in 
Blue — I am Dubbed The Smoked Ya7ik, ^ - j - - - 230 



ILLUSTRATIONS 



Kit and Betty, old friends of my boyliood. 

Escape of General Pillow. 

A slave-owner in a bad fix. 

The charge of a runaway horse. 

' ' What in liell are you pointing -your gun at this Yank f orV He is my 
prisoner." 

The captain of the "Sea Horse Cavalry" loses his boots. 

We enter Anderson ville. 

Shot at the dead line. 

Dead Yankees become articles of merchandise. 

"If you 'uns thought dah' was Yanks m dis wagon I could jus' dance 
juba on you 'uns coat tails." 

Captured by a fourteen-year-old boy. 

Bloodhounds in sight. 

' ' Eager for a glimpse of the damsel. " 

"Say, dah, young massa ! Can you paddle a canoe?" 

Guided through a swamp by rvmaway slaves. 

' ' There, with colors flying and band j)laying, go the boys in blue. " 



The Smoked Yank. 



CHAPTER I. 

TELLS HOW THIS BOOK CAME TO BE WRITTEN. 

For nearly twenty years I have been about to write 
this book. I came home from the war in 1865, a boy of 
only twenty years, but with a discharge that showed 
almost four years' serv-ice in the army. How vividly I 
recall this scene — getting off the stage at my native 
village I started to my country home on foot. Ascend- 
ing a hill, I saw over the top a team coming towards 
me, Kit and Betty, old friends of my boyhood. My 
first rides were on their backs. But who is driving? 
Can it be father? He looks too old to be father. I 
stopped in the road. The bowed head was raised. 
Who could paint the changes that came over his face 
as he came toward me? He has told me since that he 
was thinking of me and wondering if he would ever 
hear of me again, when, raising his head to try and 
drive away his sorrowful thoughts, he saw me standing 
in the road. His lost boy. More than a year of 
anxious watching and waiting since those lines had 
been received saying, "Your son has been t^ken 
prisoner," and in all that time not another. word, and 
then when trying to resolve to give me up, to raise his 
eyes and see me standing in the road, it was indeed 
a surprise. 



14 THE SMOKED YANK. 

My sons, never keep back glad tidings from 
anxious parents to give them a greater surprise. I 
ought to have sent them word of my safety at the 
earhest possible moment after reaching the Union lines. 
That was twenty years ago, and your grandfather looks 
as young to-day as he did then — he had been worrying. 
Coming home from the war an escaped prisoner — 
supposed to have died in Andersonville, I told my story 
very willingly to willing ears for awhile, and then it got 
to be tedious, even to me. 

For several weeks I was the hero of that neighbor- 
hood. Visitors thronged my father's house to see the 
escaped prisoner and to hear of Andersonville and 
other rebel prison pens, and of my escape. To each 
new party, I told the story until to me it grew old and 
stale, and, to avoid continuous repetition, I declared 
my intention of writing it up for publication. When I 
tried to do so, I found that to hold a little audience of 
friends and relatives in seeming rapt attention, was 
vastly easier than to write a connected and readable 
narrative of the same incidents. I often began, but 
never advanced to the end of a satisfactory beginning, 
and finally postponed the work until I should acquire 
through reading and education a better command of 
language. 

Thus I became a veritable procrastinator — though 
continually postponed, the purpose of writing my 
experiences in the war and publishing the narrative in 
book form was always present — I was always about to 
begin. To new friends £ nd acquaintances of my school 
life, I would occasionally relate some incident of prison 



THE SMOKED YANK. 15 

life or escape and seldom found unwilling ears to listen, 
or lack of encouragement when I mentioned my inten- 
tion of writing a book. Whether they were, many of 
them, bored by my monopolizing the conversation and 
making myself the big ego, and thought the readiest 
way to escape further infliction was to advise and 
encourage the book plan, has often since been a 
question in my mind, especially when I have realized 
how easily I find it to be thoroughly bored in a 
similar way. 

Nevertheless, that self-appointed task was never 
more than postponed. It has continued to be both my 
waking dream and the cause of much self-condemna- 
tion for not having performed the work earlier. 

At first the fancied distinction to be acquired was 
probably my strongest inducement to write. Later 
the idea of great gain by means of such a book was not 
absent. But now as I begin, I trust for the last time, to 
carry out the long-cherished and often abandonded 
scheme, neither the desire for notoriety nor the hope of 
gain, is the moving cause. 

Other hopes and dreams and plans of those twenty 
years that have gone have not been fruitless — my home 
is not now my father's house — there has been a cradle 
in my own, babies on my knee, and, now two boys, one 
nine and one ten, with the life of Alexander, of Hanni- 
bal, and of Caesar fresh in mind, are ever teasing me 
to tell them of my life as a soldier. 

" Papa» did you have any adventures when you 
were in the war?" says Sioux. " O, yes, I had a good 
many, such as they were," '* Tell them to us," says 



1 6 THE SMOKED YANK. 

George, "we would rather hear about yours than read 
those in the books." And when I tell them some and 
then speak of time for bed, I know from the look of 
keen interest in their bright eyes, and the reluctance 
with which they go, that they have not been bored. 
And I tell them I will begin at once and write my 
adventures, as they call them, all out, and have a little 
book printed for them to read. 

" Oh, won't that be jolly," says George, "to have a 
book all about Papa." "And I guess mamma and 
grandpa, too, and lots of other folks will want to read 
it," says Sioux. 

They go to bed and I begin. If I do not finish 
before these boys are too old or too wise to care for so 
plain a tale in such crude fashion told, then perhaps 
boys of theirs may come and prize the book grand- 
father wrote, and perhaps some old soldier, worn with 
toil and weary of the present days, may let it lead him 
back to the old camp ground or prison pen, and thus 
beguile a pleasant kour. 



CHAPTER II. 

I REBEL IN ORDER TO FIGHtT REBELLION. — "tHE GIRL I LEFT 

BEHIND ME." 

As it is easier to describe the actions of men than 
it is to set forth the thoughts, feelings and motives that 
moved them to action, so I expect to find much less 
difficulty in narrating all that I did or saw, worthy of 
mention while a soldier, than in telling why I be- 
came one. 

I had not passed my sixteenth birthday when the 
war began. I was a farmer's boy. Had been brought 
up on a farm near the village of Potosi, in Grant county, 
Wisconsin. A few winters at school in the old log 
school house of our district and two or three terms at 
the school in the village, had been my opportunities for 
education. You, boys, have already read more books 
than I had at that time. Such books for boys as 
Abbott's Series of Histories had not then been written, 
and probably would not have found their way to many 
log farm houses if they had been. But I had read the 
History of the American Revolution, had spoken at 
school the famous speech of Patrick Henry, and I 
loved the soul-stirring strains of the Star Spangled 
Banner. My grandfather was a soldier of the war of 
1812. His grandfather, who was known as "Revolu- 
tionary John," fought in the war of the Revolution. 
Many of the leading incidents of the history of the 
gountry, especially of the wars and of the early settle- 



1 8 THE SMOKED YANK. 

ments in Virginia and Kentucky had been handed down 
from father to son in stories and traditions, and to 
these I have always been an eager listener. 

I was well posted too, on the political questions 
that had for a long time agitated the country, for I had 
been a constant reader of Horace Greeley's New York 
Weekly Tribune. I can remember well the drubbings 
I used to get at the village school when the boys di- 
vided for snow-balling, into Fremonters and Buchan- 
anites. The Fremonters, to which I belonged, were 
largely in the minority. I can remember, too, the 
woes of "bleeding Kansas," and how I used to urge my 
father to take me with him out to Kansas so that we 
might help to put down the " border ruffians " from 
Missouri. 

The firing on Fort Sumpter was quickly followed 
by Lincoln's proclamation calling for seventy-five 
thousand volunteers. These were to serve for three 
months. A company was at once formed at Potosi. 
I wanted to go. The men who had so long been 
threatening to dissolve the Union because they could 
not have political matters their own way, had at last 
fired upon the national flag, upon the Stars and Stripes. 

As I saw in imagination the bombardment of Fort 
Sumpter, and the hauling down of the dear old flag, it 
seemed to me that I could see too, the landing of the 
Pilgrim Fathers, the "starving time " of the Jamestown 
settlement, the Indian massacres: the battles of Lex- 
ington and Bunker Hill and Brandywine; Washington 
crossing the Delaware; the awful winter at Valley 
Forge; the heroic deeds of Marion, and Sumpter, and 



THE SMOKED TANK. 19 

Jasper, and Newton; the glorious victories of our navy 
in the War of 1812; every scene of hardship and of 
heroism that had helped to win for us and to preserve 
for us our proud position among the nations of the 
earth, of which that dear old flag was the emblem, came 
trooping up in memory. " The mystic chords of mem- 
ory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave" 
had indeed been "touched" but not "by the better 
angels of our nature." 

Such were the thoughts and feelings that impelled 
me with an almost irresistible impulse to volunteer as a 
soldier and help to chastise the traitors who had insult- 
ed the flag. Such, at least, are the thoughts and feel- 
ings that I would have described had I then attempted 
to explain why I wanted to be a soldier. 

There was another reason which I would not have 
given then, and I cannot even now without a blush ; I 
was desperately in love. If there was any doubt about 
my desire to do battle for my country from purely pat- 
riotic motives, there was certainly none about my 
readiness to go to the wars, or to engage in any other 
affair of the knight-errantry order that might win smiles 
of approval from the girl I loved. 

But I could not go. I was the second in a family of 
eight children, all girls, except myself and the youngest. 
My father had gone to Pike's Peak, in the spring of i860. 
In the fall of that year he had started to cross the 
mountains and we had not since heard from him — I 
could not leave my mother with the management of the 
farm and the support of the family on her hands. I saw 
that company formed in line, dressed in their stylish 



20 THE SMOKED TANK. 

new uniforms of gray, heard the farewell speeches, saw 
flags and swords presented, saw them receive the 
warmest of kisses from all the lovely maidens for good- 
bye, and I turned away with a heavy heart, with tears 
of sore regret, and went back to my dull farm-work. 

That was my last summer's work on a farm, 
and I have always been proud of the record I made. 
Besides putting in and tending the crops on all the 
ploughed land, I had twelve acres of land, on which 
there was a heavy growth of saplings and underbrush, 
grubbed and broken. We raised an excellent crop. 

I did not neglect the farm, altnough my heart was 
not in the work. iNIo boy of adventurous disposition 
who has an inherited love for dog, and horse, and gun, 
will ever be content on a farm while there is war in his 
own country. I had owned a dog and gun, and had 
been a hunter from the time I was eight years old, and 
I could ride like an Arab. My leisure hours during 
that spring and summer were devoted to such exercise 
as I thought would best fit me for the cavalry service. 
I took lessons in sword exercise from a man in the 
village, kept a young horse for my exclusive use and 
practiced hjm jumping over fences and ditches, riding 
down steep hills at full gallop, and shooting from his 
back. 

The harvesting was all done and the grain ready 
for stacking when father got home. He had been 
snowed up all winter in the mountains of Colorado. 
My first thought was, now I can go to the war. My 
cousin, James F. Ayars, had enlisted in the 7th Wis. In- 
fantry, and I tried hard to persuade my father to let me 



THE SMOKED TANK. 21 

go in the same company. He thought I was too young 
— said that if I went into the army and survived the 
war, my opportunity for securing an education would be 
gone. He did not believe a boy would retain a desire 
for education through years of soldier life. He offered 
to send me away to school, and as the academy to 
which he proposed sending me was at Lancaster, the 
county seat, where the object of my boyish affections 
was then living, I concluded to follow his advice, and 
accept his offer. 

Early in September I was duly installed as one of 
the pupils at the Academy, but I could not shake of 
the desire to take part in the war. In the latter part of 
November, C. C. Washburn, afterward General, came 
to Lancaster and made arrangements to have a com- 
pany of cavalry recruited in that county. I went at 
once to the recruiting office. Was told that I would 
not be taken without the written consent of my father. 
How was this to be obtained ? I sat in school that 
afternoon with a book open before me thinking over 
the situation. Classes to which I belonged were called, 
but I was so deeply engaged in meditation that I took 
no heed. All at once the thought came to my mind 
that thousands of the young men who were at the front 
had left schools and offices and clerkships and, by serv- 
ing their country, were losing opportunities for education 
and for professional and business advancement— that 
the country would have but few defenders if only those 
who could do so without sacrifice were to volunteer — 
these thoughts flashed into my mind, as sunshine some- 
times flashes through a rift in the clouds, and seemed 



22 THE SMOKED TANK. 

to make the path of duty plain. I gathered up my 
books and without so much as by your leave, to the 
professor or any one else, I walked out of the school- 
room. 

In the twinkling of an eye an obedient son, who 
never before had dreamed of wilfully disobeying his 
father's command, had been transformed into an un- 
compromising rebel. 

Out of doors a cold sleeting rain was falling, and 
the wind blowing, but what would a soldier amount to 
who cared for a driving wind with sleet and rain? To 
procure a horse and gallop him over the twelve miles to 
my father's house was but an hour of sport. 

The family were at supper when I entered dripping 
with water and splashed with mud. "Why, what in the 
world ? " said mother. "What brought you home through 
such a storm ? " " Soldiers don't care for storms, mother," 
I replied, and as I spoke my father looked into my eyes. 
He saw that I had crossed the rubicon. 

That night we talked it over. I told him that I had 
resolved to be a soldier, and that if he did not give his 
consent, so that I could go in the company for our own 
county, it would only cause me to find some other place 
where I could enlist without any consent. He gave his 
consent but with great reluctance. 

Boys, I was wrong, but I did not then think so — no 
argument or persuasion could at that time have created 
a doubt in my mind. " Honor thy father and thy mother 
and thy days shall be long in the land which the Lord 
thy God giveth thee," has a different meaning to me 
now. I can see now that if I had remained at school in 



THE SMOKED YANK. 23 

obedience to my parents' wishes, although they might 
have erred in requiring me so to do, the responsibility 
would have been theirs, not mine. 

"But what became of the girl?" says one of my 
boys after listening to this point. So that's the way the 
wind blows already is it? You would rather have a 
love story than a war story would you? 

Well, boys, there isn't much to tell in the love story 
line. I shouldn't have mentioned the little there is were 
it not to let you see how nearly related love of country, 
which we call patriotism, is to all the other noble pas- 
sions. No boy can truly love a chaste and modest 
maiden without having all the better qualities of his 
nature quickened and developed. He no sooner feels 
the tender passion than he wants to look better and do 
better, and be better. The fires of ambition are usually 
kindled by love of woman. One of the most refined and 
intellectual mothers that I ever knew used often to say 
that she never had any anxiety whatever about her 
boys when they were in love. She said there was no 
danger then of their forming any loaferish or ungentle- 
manly habits. 

If she was right, and I believe she was, I had little 
opportunity for bad habits when I was a boy, for I was 
almost always in love. My affection for Helen began 
when we were but children; I was but thirteen and she 
a half year older in years, but many years older in man- 
ners and in the knowledge of social etiquette. I was 
an awkward country jake, she a village belle, admired 
by all the village beaux. It was not her handsome face 
nor her graceful, slender form, nor her bright and 



24 THE SMOKED YANK. 

laughing eyes that took my fancy, but all of these com- 
bined with a daring and venturous disposition. I taught 
her to ride on horseback, to fish, and to shoot, these were 
the sports that we both loved beet. We ran races, 
swam our horses across rivers, shot wild pigeons, and 
even stole apples and water melons out of pure devil- 
ment, for we had an abundance of them at home. Yet 
I never went to see her openly or avowedly as a lover. 
I was too bashful, too green, perhaps, for that. 

She and my oldest sister were chums, and I tried 
hard to chum with her youngest brother. I used often 
to walk two miles to town after a hard day's work for 
no other purpose than to meet her, if possible, by chance. 
Have often hid behind a bunch of lilac bushes and 
thrown gravel stones at her chamber window, striving 
thus to catch even a glimpse of her face. If you should 
ever visit your grandfather's old homestead, go down 
into the pasture, and there, beside an old road you will 
see an oak tree with twenty-one scars, one above the 
other. Each of them represents a blow of my axe and 
a word of a vow made to Helen. 

These are pleasant memories. Your Aunt Alice 
could perhaps tell you more. After I had enlisted and 
just before my company started for the war, she arranged 
that never-to-be-forgotten visit that I made to the dear 
old home with " another not a sister." Ask your aunt 
to show you two pictures that she has in one case. One 
of your father taken when he was sixteen, the other, 
taken on the same day, of " the girl I left behind me." 



CHAPTER III. 

CAMP WASHBURN — I GET MY NAME IN PRINT — PRIVATES 
EAT SANDWICHES IN THE RAIN, WHILE OFFICERS HAVE 
CHAMPAGNE UNDER SHELTER — BENTON BARRACKS — ON 
THE MARCH — I MAKE A RASH PROMISE. 

At the time I enlisted, the company was quartered 
at Patch Grove, in Grant county. There we were 
drilled until about January ist, 1862, when we joined the 
remainder of the regiment at Camp Washburn, in 
Milwaukee. 

That was a hard, cold winter, often referred to as 
the winter of the deep snow. The barracks were large 
board shanties, filled with two-story bunks for the men 
to sleep on; there was an adjoining room to eat in. 
These shanties were so open that a laconic English boy 
was not far wrong when he said: "The crocks in the 
domed old barracks are so big that you could fling a 
robbit through them anywhere." 

The cold quarters, the drills in the snow, and the 
coarse food were the cause of much grumbling. Few of 
the privates went through these months at Camp Wash- 
burn without having their patriotic ardor considerably 
cooled. Some wrote complaining letters for publication 
in the Grant County Herald. The contrast between 
these hardships and the comforts and enjoyments of 
home was probably as great in my case as in that of any 
one in the company, but I did not suffer my ardor to 
cool. Had I done so, my father could have said: "I 
told you so." 



26 THE SMOKED TANK. 

I made a good many enemies by writing a letter to 
the Herald, in which I claimed that we were faring 
sumptuously for soldiers, and that those who grumbled 
most did not live so well when at home. That was my 
first effort at getting into print, and I came so near being 
thrashed for it, that I have never since felt a long- 
ing to whack anybody through the columns of a news 
paper. 

One day we were marched to the city through a 
driving storm for review. When we had splashed around 
through slush and mud, and falling rain, and snow, until 
we had been reviewed and reviewed by some fellows who 
stood on a covered porch dressed in broadcloth and brass 
buttons, silk scarfs and plumed hats, we were formed in 
columns of fours in front of the Newhall House, and 
there we stood in the snow and rain while the fellows 
who wore the shoulder straps partook of champagne and 
like luxuries, within. A sandwich and a cup of coffee 
had been provided for each of us. 

Had the officers fared as the men did, all would have 
been well. Had there been no storm, it wouldn't have 
been so bad. My ideas about all men being created free 
and equal, were badly demoralized on that occasion. 
For once, I had nothing to say when others grumbled. 

Not one of that crowd of officers became distin- 
guished. Hundreds of the privates who stood there in 
line, are now in everything that goes to make up man- 
hood, head and shoulders above a large majority of those 
who then wore the shoulder straps. The officers who 
succeeded best in commanding volunteer American 
soldiers, were those who roughed it with the men. Who 



THE SMOKED TANK. Vj 

ever heard of Sheridan, or Sherman, or Grant keep- 
ing men in Hne in a storm, while he feasted in a hotel? 

My file leader in the company was Horace C. Carr. 
He was a man of medium height, black hair and eyes, 
broad across the shoulders and thighs, had long arms, 
and was knock-kneed. Carr could not learn to keep 
step. One day when we were drilling, I kicked his heel 
to remind him that he was out of step. He got mad and 
threatened to box my ears. I expressed an earnest de- 
sire to have him commence at once. Had n't the least 
doubt in the world that I could beat him in a fight He 
looked me over in his peculiar, sneering way, and then 
said: 

" Sonny, did you come away to get weaned? " 

I afterward found out that there were few, if any,, 
men in the company who could handle Carr, and, not- 
withstanding this stormy beginning of our acquaintance, 
Carr afterward became as warm a friend to me as any 
man ever had. 

In March, we were transferred to Benton Barracks, 
near St. Louis. There we drilled two months more, 
waiting for arms and horses. In June, having received 
arms and horses, we were transported on boats to Jeffer- 
son City, and from there began our first march, which 
brought us to Springfield, Mo. Resting there a few days, 
we started on what, up to that time, was the longest 
march or raid of the war. This was the march of General 
Curtis from Springfield to Helena, Arkansas. 

At that time, the policy of the Government was to 
whip the rebels without hurting their feelings. Nothing 
in the way of forage was to be taken without paying for 



28 THE SMOKED TANK. 

it. We must pass through the country and leave the 
growing crops uninjured, leave the slaves there to do the 
work, leave cattle, hogs, horses and mules; nothing was 
to be touched or injured unless absolutely required for 
the subsistence of the army, and even then, vouchers 
were given. Before starting out on this march, orders 
were read to the troops in accordance with this govern- 
ment policy. It is needless to say that the private 
soldiers had more sense. Whenever they heard of a 
farm that belonged to a rebel in arms, they paid it a visit 
if they could and took whatever they wanted in the line 
of forage and provision. Some of the officers tried hard 
at first to enforce the orders against this foraging. We 
were commanded to keep in ranks while marching, 
formed in line and roll called before camping, and then 
a chain guard was placed around the camp to keep us 
from getting out. My recollection is that I did not during 
that march let a day go by without making a raid on my 
own hook upon the resources of the enemy. I used to 
slip out of the ranks, get what forage I wanted, then 
keep the regiment in sight until I saw them halting for 
camp, when I would slip back as they were forming for 
roll-call, as that was always a time of confusion. 

About the third night out, I got back from my raid 
too late. The regiment was in camp and guards sta- 
tioned. I tried to slip in through the brush, but a guard 
saw and captured me. Tried to divide with him and 
get off, but he wasn't that kind. He took me to Col. 
Washburn's tent. I had honey, two hams, some chickens, 
and some bundles of oats for my horse. These things 
were all unloaded into the tent, and then the colonel 



THE SMOKED TANK. 29 

read the riot act. I told him I didn't beheve in going 
hungry or starving my horse, while the rebels, whose 
country we were in, had plenty. The colonel admitted 
that he wasn't in love with the government policy him- 
self, but he said that he was under orders, and he would 
obey whether he liked them or not, and he put it to me 
whether that wasn't the right thing for every soldier to 
do. I had to admit that it was. Then he said that if I 
would promise to ride in the ranks and obey orders 
thereafter, he would excuse me this time. I promised 
and I was then permitted to go to my company. 

That night when I began to think it over, I re- 
gretted having made such a promise. Would just as 
soon plough corn as ride in the ranks in hot weather 
over dusty roads. That was one of the hardships of 
war that I had not counted on. The next morning I 
told Captain Woods and Lieutenant Riley what had 
occurred, and that I didn't believe I wanted to be bound 
by any such agreement. I asked them whether it would 
do to go to the colonel and take it back. They thought 
that was the best thing for me to do if I didn't mean to 
keep the promise; so to the colonel I went. I told him 
that after thinking it over, I concluded to take back the 
promise I had made. He was at breakfast, and ham, 
and chicken, and honey were on his bill of fare. He 
looked at me a moment, and I could see that his frown 
had to struggle with a smile, but he managed to look 
angry as he thundered out: " Go to your company, sir, 
I will make an example of you. Your impudence is 
worse than your disobedience." A moment after, our 
pickets were fired on and we formed in line of battlq 



30 THE SMOKED TANK. 

where we remained all day expecting attack, and I sup- 
pose the colonel forgot to fulfill his promise to make an 
example of me, for I never heard anything more about it. 

During this march I got into a quarrel with a big 
six-footer, and was in a fair way to be well pommeled 
when Horace Carr interfered. He said to the big fellow: 
" I aint very large myself, but I am full grown and used 
to being licked; if you are dying for a fight, let the boy 
alone and amuse yourself with me." There was no 
fight, but from that time on Carr and myself were 
friends. 

During the march all of the soldiers supposed the 
objective point to be Little Rock, and we expected a 
hard battle there, for we learned from the negroes as 
we approached that place, that great preparations were 
being made to receive us. We reached Clarendon, east 
of Little Rock without any fighting, except now and 
then a skirmish with guerrillas. There we turned to 
the east, marched rapidly all night, and went into 
Helena on the Mississippi. I was one of the advance 
guard as we charged into the town. Had we been a 
few minutes earlier, we could have captured the rebel 
general, Pillow. He was crossing the river on an old 
flat-boat, and was some distance from the farther shore 
when we rode up to the bank of the river. 



CHAPTER IV. 

HELENA — A SLAVE-OWNER IN A BAD FIX — " FORNINST THE 
GOVERNMENT " — PLANTATION RECORDS — MEMPHIS PRO- 
HIBITION IN THE ARMY — HELPING A FRIEND TO BEAT 
THE QUARTERMASTER. 

We remained at Helena from early in July until 
late in January. The country back of the town to the 
North is high and perhaps healthy. South, East, and 
West are the low bottom lands full of swamps and 
bayous. The town is on low ground protected by a 
levee from overflow. It is, or was then, a sickly hole. 
Fever and ague and other diseases which make short 
work of a northern man who goes there in July, carried 
off at least ten per cent of our regiment. 

Helena is in the cotton belt. There were thousands 
of negroes on the cotton plantations. The government 
was at that time trying to save the Union and slavery 
too. The negroes came into Helena by hundreds. 
Their masters would follow them in and get permits to 
take them back. The privates, many of us were not in 
accord with the Government on the negro question. 
We used to follow the masters when they started away 
with their slaves, release the slaves and convince the 
masters that it would be best to keep away from camp . 

On one occasion, Carr and I saw a man leave town 
with a lot of his negroes who had run away. We fol- 
lowed him out about ten miles and then stopped him. 
We sent the negroes baqk to town, took the master'^ 




A Sl^AVE OWNER IN A BAD FIX. 



32 THE SMOKED YANK. 

horse, and told him to stay out of Helena. Carr asked 
me to ride back with the negroes, as they were afraid 
other slave-owners would arrest them, while he would 
conceal .himself and see if the enraged master would 
attempt to follow us into camp. 

Before I got back to town Carr overtook me leading 
another captured horse. He absolutely refused to 
answer any questions, and, fearing that the man had 
started to follow us back, and that Carr had killed him, 
I was willing that silence should be maintained. A few 
weeks after, I saw this slave-owner in town. He wasn't 
trying to take out negroes any more. I pointed him 
out to Carr, who then told me what had happened 
before. He saw the man coming on a horse, waylaid 
him, took him into the woods and handcuffed his hands 
around a tall tree and left him there. Carr had found 
the handcuffs on a plantation where they had been used 
in disciplining negroes, and he carried them in his 
saddle-bags as a curiosity; said he left the man near 
the traveled road so that there would be no question 
about his being released. 

All that summer we carried on a warfare of that 
kind against what we believed to be the mistaken policy 
of the government. It had a bad effect on the soldiers. 
They got to be like Irishmen when they land in New 
York, '' forninst the government." The government 
tried to protect rebels in their property. The soldier 
said, "a rebel's property belongs to the government, but 
if the government won't have it, I will," especially a 
soldier who was kept where there was no fighting to do. 

After a while the boys ceased to make any distinc- 



THE SMOKED YANK. 33 

tion between captured and other government property. 
I remember that a boat load of Irish potatoes was un- 
loaded on the wharf at Helena; they were scarce down 
there, and in great demand. An infantry soldier was 
on guard over them. We wanted some of those pota- 
toes. That night we borrowed some muskets from in- 
fantry men, obtained the countersign, and when the 
guard at the pile of potatoes had been on duty until his 
two hours were nearly up, we marched up with a pre- 
tended relief guard and relieved him. He went to 
camp and we carried off potatoes. 

Of course, that was wrong, but such acts were fre- 
quently committed, without conscientious scruples, by 
honest men, because they had lost respect for the gov- 
erment, on account of the policy that was being pursued. 
It seemed to us that the government gave more thought 
and care to the protection of the property and rights of 
rebels than to the safety and comfort of men who had 
enlisted to fight for the Union, 

While at Helena I was taken with chills and fever. 
An overseer on one of General Pillow's plantations of- 
fered to take me to his house and cure me. I went 
with him . There had been nearly two hundred negroes 
on that plantation; not one was left. The government 
didn't go quite so far as to return runaway negroes to a 
rebel general and keep them at work. That man and 
his wife had two sons. They were both in the rebel 
army. One had been wounded and was taken prisoner. 
They nursed and doctored me with as much care as 
they could have bestowed on one of their own boys. It 



34 



THE SMOKED TANK. 



gave them a feeling of security to have a Union soldier 
in their house. 

On that plantation I used to read the records kept 
by the overseer. It seems that every overseer of a 
large plantation kept a daily record. That record 
showed that there were negroes whipped, bucked and 
gagged, and otherwise punished every day. Every 
negro who came from the field with less than his stint 
of cotton, received so many lashes. I saw there the 
same kind of instruments of torture that I afterward 
saw in Andersonville. One machine was rigged for 
stretching negroes over a large roller, so that the lash 
could be applied to the bare skin. If anyone believes 
that the cruelties practised on the slaves were exagger- 
ated in Uncle Tom's Cabin, let him hunt up and read 
one of those plantation records. 

Except a few unimportant raids and a little scout- 
ing, we might as well have been infantry men during 
all these months at Helena. About February ist, we 
were transported on boats up to Memphis. I rode from 
the steamboat out to the camp ground in a storm of sleet 
and snow; and before tents were pitched for shelter, 
was wet and nearly frozen. Caught a bad cold, which 
terminated in pneumonia; was taken to the hospital. 
The doctors said my health had been so badly broken 
by fever and ague that it would be impossible forme to 
survive this attack of pneumonia. Their conclusion 
was telegraphed to my parents. 

Carr helped to carry me to the hospital and never 
left me until I was out of danger. One night when I 
had been unconscious for twentv-four hours, it seemed 



THE SMOKED TANK. 35 

that I was awakened by some one rubbing my feet. I 
could see and hear, but could not move or speak. The 
doctor, the steward, and Carr were close to me, and the 
doctor said to the others that I would be gone before 
morning. When the others went away I managed to 
make Carr understand that I was conscious and hungry. 
He fed me; I told him I was going to fool that doctor, 
and then went to sleep. In the morning, I woke up out 
of danger; was able to walk when my mother got there. 
She took me to a private boarding-house and staid with 
me until I was entirely well. 

Soldier life at Memphis was very nearly a repeti- 
tion of that of Helena. Our camp was surrounded by a 
chain of guards and we were not permitted to go away 
from camp without a pass. 

Our adventures were chiefly of the disorderly kind. 
How to get out of camp, take in the city, and then get 
back without being arrested, was the question. I went 
to the city three times as often as I would have gone had 
there been no camp guard to prevent. The selling of 
liquor to soldiers at the saloons, or by anyone, was for- 
bidden. Before that order was issued, I seldom thought 
of drinking anything. After the order was issued, I 
never went into the city without finding a place where 
the order could be evaded. Such rules and orders have 
that effect on most young men. When we were at 
Helena, rations of whisky were issued to us, and half of 
the soldiers wouldn't touch it. Most all of them who 
refused whisky at Helena, drank every time they could 
get anything to drink at Memphis. 

The regiment went out on one raid before I was 



36 THE SMOKED TANK. 

able to ride. Carr brought back a captured horse. He 
bought it from another man who captured it. The men 
who captured horses and mules always sold them if they 
could. The regimental quartermaster always confiscated 
all such property if he could. Between him and the 
soldiers there was continual strife. Carr expected to 
get out of the ranks with his purchase before getting 
back to camp, but he was so closely watched that he 
could not. Early the next morning the quartermaster 
was around taking a list of captured property, and of 
course he put down Carr's horse. He had a particular 
grudge against myself and Carr because we had so often 
outwitted him. 

I was at that time permitted to ride where I pleased, 
because I had not yet been reported fit for duty. The 
horses were all taken every morning and evening 
through the city to the river to water. Each man rode 
one horse and led another. An officer went in charge 
of each company, and he had to bring back as many 
men and horses as he took out. The officer of 
the guard counted them out and in. Carr led his pur- 
chase out at watering call. I desired to help him if pos- 
sible, so I rode out afterward and overtook the watering 
party. I told Carr to get in the rear coming back from 
the river. I took the saddle off from my horse and left 
it at a stable; got on bareback. Watching for a chance 
when the column returning from the river turned a 
corner in the city, and the officer in charge could not see 
the rear of his company, I rode my horse quickly in 
between the one Carr rode and the one he led, slipped 
from my horse on to the other, and Carr took my horse 



THE SMOKED TANK. 37 

back to camp. That made the count all correct. I left 
Carr's horse at a stable, got into a hack and was driven 
to the camp, and was in Captain Woods' tent when the 
men and horses returned. 

The quartermaster soon came in swearing mad, and 
required Captain Woods to produce the captured horse.- 
The captain was not friendly to Carr, and he entered 
with great zeal into the search for the missing horse. 
The officer that had been to the river declared that 
Carr brought back the horse he took to water. Some 
of the boys knew better, but they wouldn't give us away. 
That let Carr out. Then the quartermaster accused 
me on general principles. The captain declared that I 
was writing in his tent when the men came back with 
the horses, and he knew I did n't have anything to do 
with it. Then he said to the quartermaster: '' That 
horse was hitched to the picket-rope this morning when 
you listed him, and if you have let some one take him 
away in broad daylight, do n't you blame me for it." 

I always made out the pay-rolls for the company, 
and had been at work on them that morning in the cap- 
tain's tent. I went back to work; the captain came in. 
He looked at me awhile, and then said: " Melvin, how 
did you manage to get that horse out of camp?" I told 
him all about it; never attempted to conceal anything 
from either Captain Woods or Lieutenant Riley, and 
neither of them would catch me doing anything wrong 
if he could possibly avoid it. Carr sold his horse so as 
to clear $40. 



CHAPTER V. 

VICKSBURG — ANOTHER CASE OF BEATING U. S. — A RUNAWAY 
HORSE CARRIES ME INTO CLOSE QUARTERS— JACKSON 
AND CANTON — HAVE TROUBLE WITH UNCLE TOMMY 
AND LEAVE THE REGIMENT. 

In May we were transported in boats down to 
Vicksburg and up the Yazoo river to Hains' Bluff. 
There we went into camp to help watch Johnson who 
was waiting for a chance to raise the siege. We had 
something to do there; raiding, and scouting parties out 
every day. Once we crossed the Yazoo, and made a 
raid into the Running Water country. We captured 
a large herd of cattle and some prisoners and horses. I 
captured a'fine young mare. An officer of the 7th Kansas 
cavalry offered to give me $60 if I would bring the mare 
to his camp without letting her get branded. When the 
quartermaster once got his U. S. brand on a horse's 
shoulder, no one would buy. 

When we got to the river on our return, the brigade 
quartermaster was there to take charge of all the cap- 
tured property. He stood on the steam ferry-boat as 
the horses were loaded for crossing, and permitted no 
horse to go on board without the U. S. brand. I took 
in the situation while another regiment was being 
ferried. Then I chewed the end of a stick into a brush, 
got some tar from the hub of an old-fashioned wagon, 
and made U. S. with tar on my captured horse; worked 
the tar well into the hair, then rubbed it off with sand 



THE SMOKED TANK. 39 

until I had a fine brand, I had to tell my captain what 
I was up to, as each captain was required to stand at the 
gang-plank to assist the quartermaster as his company 
went on board. I took my horse on first, and then went 
back and brought up the rear with my captured mare. 
The captain managed to move away as I led the mare 
up the plank, and the " U. S." was so plain that no ques- 
tions were asked. 

When our regiment was alone or at the head of a 
column during a raid, my company was in advance of 
the regiment. A boy named Lynn Cook, and myself, 
nearly always rode as videttes or scouts, in advance of 
the advance guard. I do n't remember how it came 
about, but this place was always accorded to. Cook and 
myself, probably because we had keen eyes and good 
horses, and never failed to discover the enemy. 

We had skirmishes with Johnson's cavalry almost 
every day. One day the patrol guard went out, under 
Lieutenant Showalter — twelve or fifteen men. Cook and 
myself being advance guards. We saw three rebels 
coming toward us. We supposed them to be the ad- 
vance, as they were, of a larger party. Without hav- 
ing been seen, we rode back and reported, and asked 
the lieutenant to let us hide in a fence corner and cap- 
ture the Johnnies. He would not, but formed us in 
line on the side of the road where the rebels could n't 
possibly get nearer than one hundred yards without 
seeing us. 

They came riding carelessly along, one of them 
sitting sideways on his horse. We were all ready, and 
when they caught sight of us the lieutenant said, "fire.'' 



4© THE SMOKED TANK. 

Not a man was touched, but as they wheeled to ran, 
the one sitting sideways was knocked off and captured. 

I was riding a little race horse that had been cap- 
tured at Fort Pillow. He had both speed and endur- 
ance, but he would n't stand fire. On this occasion, as 
soon as the volley was fired, he bolted with me and 
dashed after the two rebels that were running away. 
They had a hundred yards the start, but in less than a 
quarter of a mile I was within a few rods of them. I had 
been trying all the time to stop my horse, and only 
managed to pull him up when about to run into a whole 
company of rebels that came dashing up the road to 
support their advance. Had the two Johnnies who 
supposed I was chasing them, not been in the way, I 
should certainly have been shot by the others. My 
horse once turned, carried me swifty back, nor did I try 
to hold him. 

Immediately after the surrender of Vicksburg we 
crossed the Big Black river, and started in pursuit of 
Johnson's army. I never could understand why Sher- 
man did not crush Johnson at Jackson. I was detailed 
as an orderly for General Parkes, who commanded the 
9th corps. The 9th corps was on our left. There was 
some fighting. I rode back and forth along our lines 
every day carrying messages, and could see that the 
rebels were withdrawing, leaving only a skirmish line 
behind their breast-works. In company with a man 
from the signal corps, I went on top of the insane 
asylum with Gen. Parkes' field glass, and reported to 
him what was going on. The rebels saw us and fired 
at us with cannon, regardless of consequences to the in- 



THE SMOKED TANK. 41 

sane. Then I climbed a tall tree from which I could 
see the movements of the enemy. They were evacu- 
ating the city all day, and I never could understand 
why, when one half had crossed the river, the other was 
not gobbled up. 

The day after Jackson was taken, our regiment 
went on a raid to Canton. Some rebels came out to 
meet us. They formed in line in the edge of some 
woods, and we formed in a field just out of reach of 
them, and there we waited until they moved away. Why 
we didn't have a fight there, I never could see. 

We camped that night at a little place called 
Vernon. In an abandoned house I found a trunk ad- 
dressed to Captain of a rebel regiment; broke it 

open, and among other things that were evidently in- 
tended for a soldier in camp, there was a pair of fine 
woolen blankets and a little bag of silver. These I 
took. I presented the blankets to our colonel, Stevens, 
and kept the silver, four or five dollars. 

A few days after that. Uncle Tommy, as the boys 
called the colonel, got on his ear because so many of us 
left the ranks to forage. Had he kept us where there 
was fighting to do, he would have had no trouble, but 
fighting was n't in his line, and we all knew it. I had 
been scouting on my own hook one day, and, on coming 
to camp, found a camp-guard out. Not expecting any- 
thing of the kind, I was captured and taken before Col- 
onel Stevens. He was in a great rage. Had my forage, 
of which I had a load, taken from me, and ordered me 
to get off my horse and be searched. I told him I had 
not taken anything but forage, and was not in the habit 



42 



THE SMOKED TANK. 



of taking anything else. Adjutant Scott asked to see 
what I had in my pockets. As the colonel, who was a 
rank Englishman, saw the silver, he fairly frothed at 
the mouth. 

"Where di 'e get that?" 

" In a house at Vernon," I replied. 

" Been a burnin' 'ouses 'ave 'e, been a robbin' of 
people and burnin' 'ouses, 'ave 'e? I'll teach 'e to break 
borders and burn 'ouses, so I will. Hadjutant, send this 
man to his company under harrest." 

I tried to explain but he ordered me off. Lieu- 
tenant Riley saw Adjutant Scott next morning, and 
together they pacified the colonel. Nothing further 
would have been said or done had I been content to let 
the matter rest. The colonel called me hard names, 
had taken money from me that he had no better right 
to than I had, and, as I did not have much respect for 
him anyway, the more I thought of it the more I 
thought I had been mis-used. 

Examining the army regulations, I found that valu- 
ables taken from the enemy should be turned over to 
the hospital department. From Adjutant Scott I 
learned that the colonel had kept my silver and made 
no report of it. After talking the matter over with 
Captain Woods, who was then acting as major, I con- 
cluded to ask the colonel for the silver. So one day when 
we had halted for a noon-day rest, I walked up to the 
colonel, who was lying in the shade surrounded by other 
officers, and asked him to return the silver that he had 
taken from me. He reached for his sabre, jumped up 
and made for me as though he meant to run me through 



THE SMOKED YANK. 43 

on the spot. Captain Woods and the other officers 
stopped him and reminded him that he had no right to 
use his sabre on a soldier for asking a question. 

A few weeks after this, we were in camp near Vicks- 
burg and orders came from Washington to grant fur- 
loughs for meritorious conduct to two soldiers in each 
company. My conduct had not been in all respects 
meritorious, but I had, on several occasions, volunteered 
for hazardous service, and had never been known to 
shirk when there was dangerous work to do. I was one 
of the two recommended by the officers of my company 
for furlough. Had never had or asked for a furlough, 
and now to get one for meritorious conduct, and visit 
my home in the North during the hot, sickly weather 
when the army would be idle, nothing could have 
pleased me more. 

Imagine my feelings when the recommendation 
came back disapproved by Colonel Stevens. I went 
with Captain Wood to see him. We had a stormy in- 
terview. The colonel said I deserved a court-martial 
rather than a furlough. The captain then demanded a 
court-martial. 

I was subsequently tried before a court-martial on 
charges preferred by Colonel Stevens. The trial was 
in the colonel's tent. I did not hear the evidence sub- 
mitted against me, but I was called in and asked to ex- 
plain how and where I obtained the silver, and why I 
asked the colonel to return it to me. I sat on a cot in 
the colonel's tent, and turning up the blankets, noticed 
the very same white blankets that I took from the trunk 



44 THE SMOKED YANK. 

in which I found the silver. When I had told where I 
got the silver, I said: 

''Gentlemen, I took a pair of white wool blankets 
from the same trunk and presented them to Colonel 
Stevens. He thanked me with great kindness and 
made no inquiries as to where I got them. I think 
these are the same blankets." 

I uncovered a pair of white blankets on the cot. 
The officers of the court smiled; the colonel got red in 
the face and tried to explain, but about all that he 
could say was that he did not know that I was the boy 
that gave him the blankets. As I never heard anything 
more from the court-martial, I suppose that the charges 
were not sustained. 

I liked my companions in the company and never 
had any trouble with my company officers, but, knowing 
that the colonel was watching for a chance to get me 
into trouble, and fearing that he might, I obtained 
through Captain Woods an order from the division 
commander, placing me on detached service, and assign- 
ing me for duty at the division headquarters in Vicks- 
burg. There I was an orderly for two or three 
months and was then made chief of orderlies. 

The duties of an orderly in an army that is 
in actual service are about the same as those of a 
page in Congress. The orderlies usually know 
everything and see everything that is going on. If 
they please the officers under whom they work they 
are well treated, if they do not, they are sent to their 
regiment. 

My duties at the division headquarters, especially 



THE SMOKED YANK. 45 

after I was promoted to chief of orderlies, were light 
and pleasant. I would in all probability have remained 
on detached service until the term for which I enlisted 
expired, had I not met with the misfortune hereafter 
related. 



CHAPTER VI. 

I GET LEAVE OF ABSENCE AND HAVE SOME FUN WITH 
THE BOYS — HELPING PLANTERS TO MARKET COTTON — 
"an atheist's laugh a poor EXCHANGE FOR DEITY 
offended" — CAPTURED BY GUERILLAS. 

In February, 1864, my regiment was in camp at 
Redbone Church, twelve miles south of Vicksburg, 
Major Harry Eastman, in command. The weather 
was delightful, the regiment in good health and fine 
spirits. Dashing Harry, as the major was sometimes 
called, and nearly all of his officers and men, were 
reported to be coining money in the cotton business. 
Every man that I saw in the regiment reported "jolly 
good times in camp." 

There was not much to do at division headquarters. 
General McArthur and most of the men in the division 
were out on the Meridian campaign. I obtained from 
the adjutant-general a leave of absence for ten days, 
and went out to camp to have some fun with the boys. 

The cotton camp was on the Black River, several 
miles from the main camp at Redbone. From this 
camp a raiding party was sent out nearly every day, 
avowedly for the purpose of hunting Whittaker's 
scouts, a band of guerillas that infested the region, 
but really for the purpose of protecting teams that 
followed afterto bring in cotton. The first morning after 
I arrived at the cotton camp a raiding party one hundred 
strong started out under Dashing Harry himself. J 



'• THE SMOKED YANK. 47 

went along and, being a visitor and not obliged to stay 
in the ranks, I soon discovered the object of the raid. 
At every plantation the major would have a private 
interview with the planter and then march on. As 
soon as the command was fairly out of sight that 
planter would have all the hands on the place hitching 
up teams and loading on cotton. We started at an 
early hour; about noon we reached Port Gibson, and 
went in on a charge, scaring the people out of their 
wits and causing the few daring rebels that were there 
to see the girls they had left behind them to leave 
with short allowance. Here I enlisted four of the 
boys, whom I considered of good grit, into a scheme to 
gobble a team and load of cotton. Our plan was to 
slip out when the command was about ready to start, 
remain in town until the rest were out of sight, then 
secure a team, load it with cotton, and follow the com- 
mand into camp. All went well until the troops began 
' disappear over the hill, then five of us seemed a 
.nail number to hold the town, and before the rear 
guard had disappeared over the hill three of my boys 
deserted, leaving two of us in Port Gibson. Night was 
coming on by the time we were fairly out of town with 
our four mule team and negro driver. At one of the 
plantations where I had seen the major interview the 
planter we halted, and ordered him to load that team 
with cotton as soon as possible. He asked who I 
wanted the cotton for. I told him for Major Eastman. 
He had that team loaded in less than a jiffy. We left 
the plantation at dark; I rode ahead of the team and 
my companion brought up the rear. Our road lay 



48 THE SMOKED YANK. 

over a hilly country, part of the way through timber. 
It was twenty-five miles to camp; the darkness intense. 
Reader, try such a ride on such a night in a guerilla 
region, and if you don't wish for the end of your journey 
before you find it, your experience will not be what 
mine was. At daybreak we unloaded four bales among 
other bales of cotton on the bank of the Black River, 
reported the fact to an officer, and in a few days after- 
wards Charley Campbell and I received $90 each for 
our share of that night's work. I afterward saw the 
planter in Major Eastman's tent, but how they settled 
for the four bales of cotton I never inquired. Such 
incidents were the every-day occurrences of the cotton 
camp. 

A few days after this Lieutenant D. L. Riley, with 
a detachment of men, was sent further up the river to 
guard a ford, and also to keep the guerillas in that 
vicinity from molesting the planters as they hauled 
their cotton to market at Vicksburg. 

After establishing his camp at the ford, the lieuten- 
ant rode into Redbone. He told me that he had learned 
from a negro that there was a large quantity of C. S. A. 
cotton (cotton purchased by the confederate govern- 
ment and branded C.S.A.) concealed in a swamp six or 
seven miles above his camp at the ford. I returned 
with Riley and found Lieutenant Showalter and the 
men very much excited. During the night a large 
band of guerillas had charged up to the opposite bank 
of the river and fired on them— but as all the boys 
were sleeping behind bales of cotton, none were hurt. 
That day we scouted in all directions but could hear 



THE SMOKED YANK. 49 

nothing of the guerillas, though we saw a number of 
men that looked as though they might do good service. 
As each one had a surgeon's certificate exempting him 
from conscription, and also professed loyalty to the 
Union, we passed them by. There was one, however, 
a fine looking man of thirty or thereabouts, that par- 
ticularly excited the lieutenant's suspicion. He not 
only showed a surgeon's certificate, but also a pass and 
a letter from the post commander at Vicksburg. I 
think his name was Warner. 

The next morning in company with Sergeant E. 
Wiseman, Lynn B. Cook, H. C. Carr, James Shanley, 
George Cornish, Patrick Woods, and James Johnson, I 
crossed the river, intending to make a circuit through 
the country, and come to the river at the swamp above 
where the C.S. A. cotton was reported to be. It was 
our intention to make a raft of the cotton and float it 
down the river to camp. We started before daybreak; 
I was riding ahead and out of sight of the rest of the 
party, when I came in sight of the plantation, owned by 
the fine-looking, suspicious gentleman before mentioned, 
just in time to see him dismount at his gate and lead his 
horse toward the house. I put spurs to the mule that I 
was riding, and when I reached the house the man had 
unsaddled the horse, a fine looking animal, and was 
holding him by the bridle. I rode up, revolver in hand, 
and asked him where he had been so early in the morn- 
ing. He replied that a lady in the house had been 
taken sick in the night and he had been to see a physi- 
cian. I told him that I had been compelled to ride a 
mule because my horse was sick, and that I would be 



so THE SMOKED TANK. 

obliged to take his horse; but that if he would come to 
camp that night, he might have his horse back if the 
lieutenant was willing. He made some remonstrances 
and spoke of a letter of protection from some Union 
officer. I dismounted with the intention of putting my 
saddle on the horse, but just then a lady stepped on the 
porch, and the man gave her the bridle saying: 

" If you take this horse, you must take it from 
the owner." 

She said: "You Yankees have taken everything I 
had in the world except this horse, and if you get this 
you will have to take it from me by force !" 

I supposed the lad}'^ to be the wife of the man. 
Both had an air of gentility and used the language of 
culture. My ideas of chivalry did not admit of my 
taking a horse^ from a lady by force, and so I vented 
my spleen on the man in threats and insulting language, 
mounted my mule and rode away. We arrived at 
Hankinson's ferry, just below the cotton, about nine 
o'clock. Four of the party went to see if the cotton 
was all right and four of us remained at the house to 
have breakfast prepared for all. The inmates of the 
house were the ferryman, his wife, and an old negress. 
The house, itself, was one of the double log houses 
common in the South, the two parts of the house being 
separated, the space between, called the " passage," 
having floor and roof but no side walls. The house 
fronted the river; the road, leading from it, ran up 
the river. 

The old auntie prepared the breakfast and called 
us in. We sat down to the table. One of our number 



THE SMOKED TANK. 51 

was a handsome young man, then about 23 years of 
age. At his country home he had been the pet and 
pride of the family; a leader among the young folks of 
his neighborhood. He was active, witty, and clever 
In our company he had been, from the first, a kind of 
clown or fun-maker. Sometimes he would play drunk, 
get arrested, and carried struggling and kicking before 
some officer, where, to the chagrin of his captors, he 
would stand up sober as a judge. His favorite role 
was that of a camp-meeting preacher. His parents 
were Methodists, and his store of the words and 
phrases peculiar to camp-meeting and revival sermons 
was indeed wonderful. Mounted on a box, barrel, or 
stump, he would go through an entire camp-meeting 
service — song, sermon, prayer and all — and so perfectly 
could he act his part that strangers were often astonish- 
ed to learn that he was merely in jest. 

On this occasion we were no sooner seated around 
the table than this young man, assuming perfect 
gravity of manner, bowed his head and pretended to 
invoke the Divine blessing. The old auntie opened 
wide her eyes with astonishment, and, at the conclusion 
" Thank God," she said, "de Yankees am not all sinnas." 

Poor boy! How little he thought he was never 
again to take a seat at a well-spread table, and that the 
memory of that blessing, asked in mockery, would 
haunt him to his grave. It did haunt him to his dying 
hour and he died of hunger. Often afterward, half- 
naked, cold and sick and nearly famished for food, as 
he took his poor ration of bread, the memory of that 
thoughtless mimicry would come over him and the 



52 THE SMOKED TANK. 

tears of bitter remorse would chase each other down 
his bony cheeks. Boys, if you are ever tempted to 
scoff at sacred things let this poor boy's fate be a warn- 
ing. His thoughtless act was not the cause of his early 
death, but, done as it was, an instant before an un- 
expected crisis, it made a deep and lasting impression, 
and none can say what his future might have been but 
for the influence of that guilty feeling on his mind. No 
man knows what an hour, even a moment, may bring 
forth. Remember this from Burns: 

The great Creator to revere, 

Must sure become the creature; 
But still the preaching cant forbear. 

And ev'n the rigid feature ; 
Yet ne'er with wits profane to range 

Be complaisance extended ; 
An atheist's laugh's a poor exchange 

Foir Deity offended. 

— When ranting round in pleasure's ring 

Religion may be blinded; 
Or if she gie a random sting, 

It may be little minded; 
But when in life we're tempest driv'n, 

A conscience but a canker, — 
A correspondence fixed with Heaven 

Is sure a noble anchor. 

We had just commenced to eat, when some dogs 
began barking around the house. Sergeant Wiseman 
went out and came in directly, saying there was a man 
on the other side of the river calling for the ferry, and 
that he would stay out and stand guard until the rest 
of us had finished our breakfast. I was just rising from 
the table, when there burst upon our ears the unearthly 
hip, hip, hip, of the rebel yell. I leaped into the passage 
to grab a gun, and whiz, whiz, whiz, the bullets flew all 
around me. I thought of the corn-field, and looked 
that way; a line of rebels was within a hundred yards, 



TtlB SMOk^D TANK. 53 

Turning toward the gate, the muzzles of a half dozen 
cocked guns were leveled at me. Instantly and almost 
instinctively my hands went up in token of surrender, 
and I hastened toward the men in front, to escape being 
shot by those behind. 

As before stated, I had been acting as chief of or- 
derlies at division headquarters, and was, therefore, in 
better dress than private soldiers usually wear. My only 
weapon was an elegant silver mounted self-cocking re- 
volver, fastened around me by a morocco belt, such as 
officers usually wore. I had, being so ordered in no 
gentle words, unbuckled this belt and was handing it 
with revolver attached, up to the man nearest me who 
sat on his horse, when I saw coming toward me, his face 
pale with rage and shot-gun in hand, the man, Warner, 
riding the very same horse that his sister had kept me 
from taking a few hours before. It was well that I saw 
him and that my presence of mind did not forsake me. 
I knew from the expression on his face and his actions 
as well, that he was ready to shoot me, but could not, 
where I stood, without danger to the man to whom I 
was handing the belt. 

As the man took the belt and revolver, I saw that 
he was pleased with it. Such weapons were highly 
prized by the rebels, and I quickly handed up my watch 
and pocketbook, and said as I did so: 

" Am I your prisoner? " 

"Well, I reckon! How big are them boots?" he 
said. 

"You can have the boots, but don't let that man 
shoot me," I quickly responded. 



54 THE SMOKED YANK. 

Looking at Warner Boatwright, for that was my 
captor's name, said: 

" What in hell are you pointing your gun at this 
Yank, for? He is my prisoner." 

" I do n't care a damn whose prisoner he is, I am 
going to shoot him," said Warner. 

It seemed that these men were not personally 
asquainted, for Boatwright's reply was something like 
this: 

" I reckon you do n't know me, by G — d, I'm Boat- 
wright, the independent scout, that's who I am; and 
when any man shoots my prisoner, he had bettei* shoot 
me first." 

More words followed back and forth, until finally 
Boatwright moved his horse away from me, and with 
cocked revolver in hand, said to Warner: 

" You are going to kill that unarmed boy, are you? 
Now you just blaze away!" 

Warner knew what that flashing eye and defiant 
manner meant, and, completely cowed, he turned his 
horse and rode away. Is it any wonder that I remember 
almost every act and word of those two men during 
those few brief moments, or any wonder that I remem- 
ber nothing else of what was going on around? I had 
watched and listened to that quarrel fully realizing that 
my life was wavering in the balance. Warner, because, 
perhaps, he was not cool enough in such an emergency 
to invent a story better suited to his purpose, had re- 
lated our morning encounter about as it was. I admitted 
what he said, and claimed that he had not sufficient 
provocation to justify his shooting me; and so Boat- 



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THE SMOKED YANK. 55 

Wright thought. Warner's real reason for wanting to 
put me out of the way, was, no doubt, because he knew 
I had seen his surgeon's certificate, and his permit to go 
and come through the Union lines, and now here he was 
in arms with rebels, and therefore liable to be shot as a 
spy should he be caught and tried. But these things 
came up and were talked over later in the day. No 
more was said up to the time Warner rode away, than 
I before stated, and not until he had gone, did I feel 
the terrible strain. Then I weakened, my knees knocked 
together as though an ague chill was on me, and I had 
to sit down to keep from falling. 

Meantime, while these things that I remember so 
well were transpiring, the rest of the boys were being 
captured, and the plunder, consisting of horses, guns, 
revolvers, watches, money, and whatever they had 
worth taking, was being divided between twenty-five or 
thirt}^ guerillas, In whose hands we now were. Except- 
ing Boatwright, and one or two others who claimed to 
be independent scouts, they belonged to Whittaker's 
scouts. 

But all this time, where is Sergeant Wiseman, \vho 
went out to stand guard? Some of the guerillas said 
they had fired at a man crawling up the bank on the 
other side of the river. Those of us who were taken, 
supposed that he saw the guerillas approaching, and 
without giving us any alarm, sought his own safety in 
flight. I have never heard his account of the affair and 
can, therefore, only hope that we were wrong. 



CHAPTER VII. 

SAMPLES OF CHIVALRY — JOKING WITH A JOHNNY — HELPING 
TO FILL UP THE SETS — A WEARISOME MARCH WITH- 
OUT FOOD EXCEPT -FOR REFLECTION — TOO ANGRY TO 
EAT. 

Just after Warner rode away, and while the re- 
mainder of our captors were arranging to follow, we 
were all startled by the report of a gun from the other 
side of the river and the whistlmg of a bullet directly 
over our heads. Looking in the direction from which 
the sound came, we saw James Trelore, one of our com- 
pany, taking his carbine from his shoulder, as he did so, 
he wheeled his horse and galloped away. Several 
shots were fired at him by our guardians, none of which 
took effect. 

It seems that he had been sent up to see how we 
were getting along, and that he had arrived on the 
other side of the river just in time to see us in the 
hands of our new friends. Trelore was a good shot 
and I have always supposed that he did not aim closely 
at any of the rebels for fear of hitting us, but merely 
fired over their heads with a view of frightening them 
away. They did not frighten, and he came near paying 
dearly for his audacity. 

Out of the twenty-five or thirty guerillas that sur- 
rounded us in the first place, only five or six remained 
after our capture was made, the rest galloped away on 
the trail of the other four of our party. They came 



THE SMOKED TANK. 57 

Upon them in the woods antl a sharp skirmish ensued, 
resulting in the wounding of Carr in the thigh by a 
buckshot and the kilHng of one of the guerilla horses. 
The guerillas, after exchanging a few shots at long 
range, and finding that there were only four, charged on 
them with the usual rebel yell. Carr, too brave for his 
own good, took deliberate aim at short range and would 
have killed his man had not the horse's head, suddenly 
raised, received the bullet. Before he could re-charge 
his carbine, a dozen men were around him. Bringing 
their prisoners together, the guerillas rode away with 
us rapidly until about the middle of the afternoon, when 
we came to the rendezvous, where we found Captain 
Whittaker and the rest of his band. 

Here Warner demanded of the captain that I be 
delivered over to him as his prisoner to be dealt with 
as he might see fit, at the same time stating his reasons 
for the demand. Boatwright spoke up boldly and 
charged that Warner had been afraid to show his colors 
in the morning when I had met him single-handed, and 
that he now wanted to take me off and murder me after 
I had been made a prisoner by others. He intimated 
very strongly, too, that he had promised me his protec- 
tion, and that it would n't be safe for Warner or any 
one else to harm a hair of my head. 

The quarrel between the two men again waxed 
warm, and it transpired that Warner's real reason for 
wanting to put me out of the way was not so much what 
I had said and done that morning as the fact that I had 
seen his pass from a Union officer, and could, should I 
escape, or in any other way get back into the Union 



58 THE SMOKED TANK. 

army, and cause his capture, furnish evidence to convict 
him as a spy. Whittaker listened awhile and then 
decided in this way: 

" Young man," he said to me, " I do n't think you 
have done anything very much out of the way, but un- 
less you will take an oath that you will never, under any 
circumstances, seek revenge on Warner, or try to do 
him harm, I shall turn you over to him to do with as he 
sees fit." 

I saw no other way out, but I think I made some 
mental reservations as I held up my hand and took that 
oath. If my memory serves me right, all of my fellow- 
prisoners were required to take the same oath. 

Even then, Warner was not satisfied. He asked 
to be one of the number detailed to guard us. To this, 
Boatwright vigorously objected, and volunteered to be 
one of our guards himself, for the purpose, as he plainly 
stated, of seeing that Warner did not play the sneak 
and get a shot at an unarmed foe. 

Boatwright was certainly a generous and brave 
man. He told us some wonderful stories of his exploits 
as a scout and guerilla, some of which if true, were not 
to his credit; but his whole conduct while with us, indi- 
cated, that though rough in appearance and coarse in . 
language, he-had anything but a mean spirit. 

If I remember correctly, there were seven guards in 
all, under command of Boatwright; who started with us 
for the headquarters of the rebel general in command 
of that district. The first night we camped where there 
were two log cabins. We were put into one, the guards 
took the other. Two at a time stood guard at our door. 



THE SMOKED TANK. 59 

Carr and I arranged a plan for our escape. We 
proposed that when all the guards but the two were 
asleep, we would suddenly spring on these two, get their 
guns and capture the rest before they could be aroused, 
and then by traveling in the night only, and through the 
woods, go with the prisoners to our own lines. It was a 
feasible plan, and at first all agreed to it. But as the 
time for action approached, two or three of the boys 
became faint-hearted and declared it should not be 
done. So they shut the door and laid down in front of 
it, threatening that they would cry out and alarm the 
guard, should any of us attempt to open the door. 

Thus securely guarded both by friends and foes, I 
spent my first night as a prisoner. The boys that re- 
fused to join in the break for liberty were probably 
right. They said they were afraid it could not be done 
without killing some of the guards, and that whether 
any of them were hurt or not, we could not take so large 
a party back to our lines without discovery and re-cap- 
ture, and that if we tried and failed, we would all be shot. 

The second night we came to the camp of a rebel 
brigade — these were regular rebel soldiers — they treated 
us well. Gave us a tent to sleep in, plenty to eat, and 
two of us, Cook and myself, and two of the Johnnies, as 
we called them, engaged in a friendly game of draw- 
poker during the greater part of the night. Neither Cook 
nor myself had any money, but some of the Johnnies, 
just to see the fun of the game between two Yanks and 
two Johnnies, furnished us with funds. We came out 
ahead, and our backers generously divided with us our 
winnings. 



6o THE SMOKED TANK. 

Here we were placed under charge of new guards, 
the old ones, except Boatwright, going back. We 
traveled to MorrisvIUe that day and there waited for a 
train. By this time, the wound received by Carr had 
become inflamed and made him sick. Boatwright took 
im to a physician who examined the wound and said 
the bullet must be extracted, but before he would do it, 
he wanted to know where he was to get his pay. Carr 
told him that he was a prisoner and had no money. 
Still the physician refused to perform the operation 
without pay. I mention this as an example of the 
boasted southern chivalry. Finally, Cook and myself 
produced the money won in the poker game, and gave 
it to the man, who then performed the operation and 
dressed the wound quite skilfully. 

We witnessed another illustration of southern chiv- 
alry at the same town. We were guarded in a negro 
quarter or hut. Our supper was brought in by a good- 
looking mulatto girl. The owner of the place, the girl's 
master, came in while we were eating, and seemed 
desirous of arguing with us the questions that divided 
the North and South. 

"You uns," said he, "think a nigger just as good as 
a white man, don't you?" 

"Yes, in some respects," we said. 

" Now, I suppose you would just as soon marry a 
nigger wench as to marry a white woman, would n't 
you?" 

Thinking the old gentleman would take a joke, I 
said to him: 

" I would n't like to marry any nigger wench that I 



THE SMOKED TANK. 6i 

have seen around here, for fear that I would have some 
of you rebels for a daddy-in-law." 

As I spoke I looked from him to the mulatto girl, 
standing near. Whoopee! How the old man did rave! 
He stormed and swore and finally started for the house 
saying, he would n't stand such an insult from no damned 
Yankee. He meant business, too, for he soon came 
back with a shot gun, which he would doubtless have 
fired into us, had not Boatwright stood in the door, 
and, partly by the influence of his drawn revolver and 
partly by persuasion, appeased the old man's wrath. I 
was always careful after that about joking with 
Johnnies. 

From this place, we were taken on the cars to 
Brookhaven, Boatwright still in command of the party. 
While on the cars, a tall, awkward, loud-mouthed, and 
vile-tongued man in dirty uniform, commenced to talk 
and banter with some of our boys. Not getting the 
best of a wordy engagement, he soon had his six- 
shooter out and valorously flourishing it in the faces of 
unarmed prisoners, swore he could whip any five Yanks 
on earth, and dared any man there to deny it. He had 
a bottle of liquor with him which he began to drink, 
and the more he drank the braver he became until he 
began to talk about killing one Yank, just to celebrate 
the day. He carried this so far as to order us to draw 
lots for the honor of being his target. His order not 
being obeyed, he cocked his weapon and flourished it 
so recklessly that Boatwright, who until then had 
scarcely noticed him, leveled a cocked revolver at him 
and ordered him to lay down his gun. For a moment 



62 THE SMOKED YANK. 

he looked at the cold, gray eyes behind the cocked re- 
volver, and then began with: " How are ye, pard?" to 
try and make friends with Boatwright. 

" I am no pard of a man that insults prisoners," 
said Boatwright, and he took the pistol from the cow- 
ardly ruffian, uncapped it, threw his bottle of liquor out 
of the window, and ordered him to take a seat and 
hold his tongue, which the tall son of chivalry, com- 
pletely cowed, seemed glad to do. 

At Brookhaven, very much to our regret, Boat- 
wright left us. He seemed to have the right to go 
where he pleased as an independent scout, as he called 
himself. I know of no reason for his staying with us as 
long as he did, except to prevent Warner from follow- 
ing us and seeking an opportunity to wreak his ven- 
geance on myself. In fact, he often spoke of his fears 
on that point, and after the first night until he left us, 
always insisted upon my sleeping with him. One night 
while we were at Morrisville, he took Lynn Cook and 
myself to a tavern, and we all occupied the same room. 
Before going to bed, he asked us to pledge our word of 
honor to make no attempt to escape, and then un- 
dressed and went to bed with us. He told us he would 
be very glad to have us get away and safely back to 
our friends, but he did n't want us to escape while he 
was in charge of us, for that would cause him trouble. 

Just before he left us I had a long talk with him, 
and he advised me to get away. He gave me all the 
points he could about the best course to pursue in case 
I should escape. We saw him go with great reluctance. 
Although he told of many exploits in killing Union 



THE SMOKED TANK. 63 

men and negroes, many of which, if true, were ex- 
tremely cruel and not to his credit, his whole treatment 
of our party was a splendid e^xample of real chivalry. 
I have never seen or heard of him since, but whether he 
got killed in some dare-devil venture or, as such men 
were likely to do, became a member of some gang of 
desperadoes after the war, such as the James Brothers' 
gang, I warrant that for personal coolness and nerve 
he seldom, if ever, met his superior; and, whatever his 
lot, if he still lives, I would be glad and proud to shake 
the hand of Boatwright and thank him again for his 
kind and manly treatment. 

■ At Brookhaven, Cook, Carr, and myself laid many 
plans for escape. Our schemes for getting away by 
stealth were all in one way or another frustrated. Some 
of them, we thought, by the treachery of our com- 
panions. We had joined a larger party of prisoners, 
and there were now twenty-five or thirty of us in all. 
If we could have united the whole party in an attempt, 
we could easily have set ourselves at liberty by force. 
But the majority were afraid to try it, claiming that the 
whole village and country around would be in arms and 
that we would be tracked by blood-hounds and either 
killed or re-captured. 

We were well treated. In fact a few of us, especially 
Lynn Cook and Wm. Cook, who could play on the 
fiddle, and myself and one or two other men, had some 
regular jollifications. Some of our guards, who were 
strangers in the town, formed the acquaintance of the 
young folks and got up dancing parties. The ladies 
being largely in the majority, because the young men 



64 THE SMOKED TANK. 

were all away in the army, some of us Yanks were in- 
vited to the parties as the rebel girls said, just to fill up 
the sets. We fancied that they found our company 
quite as agreeable as that of any of the Johnnies. 

At one of these dancing parties to which Lynn Cook 
and myself were invited and taken under guard, we 
made an unsuccessful attempt to escape. It was a 
warm evening and the windows in the room were up. 
We arranged a cotillion in which our two guards and 
ourselves were the gentlemen. We confided our scheme 
to two of the ladies with whom we had become familiar 
and to whom we were pretending to make love and 
they agreed to assist. After the cotillion ended, we 
called for a waltz, and while our two guards were waltz- 
ing and only one guard with a gun left at the front door, 
our partners were to continue the waltz together and let 
Lynn and myself slip out of the window. The room 
was but dimly lighted with one or two tallow candles. 
Cook went first, had cleared the window, and I was 
half out, when both our partners screamed: " They are 
getting away. The Yanks are getting away." The 
guards seized their guns, ran out at the front door, and, 
as it was a bright moonlight night, we thought the 
chances were against us and made as great speed in 
getting back into the room as we had tried to make 
in getting out. 

Whether our lady friends meant to play us a trick 
or whether they saw we were noticed by others and 
screamed to keep themselves from being implicated, we 
never found out, for we were taken at once to our prison 
house without being permitted, as formerly, to go home 



THE SMOKED YANK. 65 

with our girls with guards behind us. We were not in- 
vited to any more dances. 

A few days after we were taken on the cars back 
to Morrisville, and from there on foot through Jack- 
son, (which place we helped to capture but a few 
months before,) to Canton, another town that we had 
before been in sight of but had not entered, there 
being, in the opinion of our commander, too many 
rebels there at the time. As we were all cavalry 
men and not used to walking, this journey in warm 
weather, over a sandy road, was hard on our feet. 
I nearly gave out the first day, and I well remember 
how glad I was when the rebel guards said that we 
would camp at a plantation we were approaching. 

On nearing the place I recognized the house as one 
that I had been in on my return trip from Canton, be- 
fore mentioned. On that occasion, I rode up to this 
house and found it full of Union soldiers, who were 
literally stripping it. They were even taking jewelry 
from the hands of the women. It was customary on such 
excursions for the officer in command to place guards 
at such houses to protect them from pillage and the 
women from insult. Seeing no guard at this house and 
cowardly work going on, I drew my sword, declared 
that I was a detailed guard, drove the plunderers away, 
and staid there until the rear guard came along. The 
ladies were at the time loud in their praise and profuse 
in their thanks. 

Now, as I neared the same house, tired, limping on 
blistered feet, and hungry, I thought to myself and 
probably said to my companions, "we will be well- 



66 THE SMOKED YANK. 

treated here, because these people owe me a good 
turn." 

The place belonged to Doctor Lee. He came out 
as we reached the house and the sergeant in charge 
told him that he desired to camp for the night, and 
asked whether he could have shelter and food for his 
men and prisoners. The doctor was all excitement in 
a moment. 

" Food for those damned Yankee thieves.''" said he. 
" I'd feed a hungry dog, but not a damned crumb will I 
give to a thieving Yankee. If I could see them burning 
in hell, not a damned drop would I give them to drink. 
I'll give them shelter, damn them, yes, take them to the 
nigger quarters. They say a nigger is as good as a 
white man. I say a nigger is a damn sight better than 
a white Yankee, and the nigger quarter is too good for 
them." 

This, and much more, he rattled off. Who could 
blame him? The negro quarters were, as he said, 
empty, because the Yankees had stolen the negroes 
away. And what must be the feelings of any husband 
and father to return to his home and find that armed 
men had been there and stripped the premises of every 
living and eatable thing, insulted his wife and 
daughters, wantonly destroyed what they could not use, 
and even robbed women of their finger rings. Such 
had been this man's experience. Who could blame 
him for his wrath? 

Still, I did not then think of it in that light. I in- 
duced one of the guards to go and tell him that I was 
the man that had driven the other Yankees out of his 



THE SMOk'ED VAjVA'. 67 

house, and stood guard over the ladies to protect them 
from further wrong. I felt confident that when he 
heard this he would invite me at least into his house, 
and treat me with hospitality. But not so. He sent 
back an insulting message, and the sergeant said that 
he refused to allow any of the prisoners to have a 
mouthful of food while on his place. It was now my 
turn to get angry, at least, angry I got, and painfully 
angry, too. In all my life I don't think I have ever at 
any other time been so completely soaked and choaked 
with passion as I was at that place. The more I thought 
of the miserable return I was receiving for the generous 
action I had performed the more my blood seemed to 
boil. My feet were painfully blistered. The sergeant 
had an old negro bring me some water in a tub in which 
to bathe them. To this old negro I told how I had 
been there before, and what I had done, and he went 
away saying he would try and get me something to eat. 
After an hour or so he came back with a large pan of 
corn bread and some meat. By this time my indigna- 
tion had mastered my hunger, and I gave the food to 
my companions, telling them that if they wanted to eat 
on that man's place they could, but as for me I wanted 
no food that he could call his. I lay awake nearly, if 
not quite, all night, studying how to best take revenge 
on this Doctor Lee, as soon as I could get free. It 
turned out that my blood had plenty of time to cool 
before I got free. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

"to the victors belong the spoils"— I LOSE MY SUS- 
PENDERS — A JOLLY REBEL RASCAL — A CAPTAIN OF THE 
HORSE MARINES. 

On our arrival at Canton we were drawn up in line 
before the tent of Colonel Lee. We were told that he 
was related to Gen. R. E. Lee Here we were searched 
and our names taken on the roll, and we were then sent 
to the prison room, which was in the second story of a 
large brick building. 

Here we found about 150 other prisoners; the room, 
as I remember it, was about 25x80 feet, There was in 
it a common box heating stove with one lid on top On 
this stove the cooking for the whole party was done. 
The rations were corn meal and bacon. 

There being now nearly, if not quite, 200 men in the 
room you can imagine that that stove had something to 
do. We were divided into messes and each mess took 
its turn at the stove. We got along very well with the 
cooking. As for the sleeping, those that had blankets 
made a bed of them on the floor. As there were no 
blankets in our party, we made our bed on the floor 
without blankets. 

When we entered this room, the prisoners already 
there told us to conceal carefully any money or any- 
thing else we had that we didn't want stolen, and to 
cut holes in our clothes. We had only been there a few 
hours when we found out why we were so advised. 



THE SMOKED TANK. 69 

The guards on duty in and around the building 
were reUeved every day at noon. The sergeant and 
squad of men that came to reheve the guards on duty re- 
quired all of the prisoners to stand up in rows to be 
counted. The sergeant counted and the soldiers searched 
each man in turn. Not only our party that had just 
arrived but every man in the room, and strange to say, 
although this searching process had been gone through 
with by every new guard that had come on duty since the 
'first prisoners were kept there, hardly a day passed but 
some rebel succeeded in finding something that had 
been successfully concealed through all previous 
searches. I remember of a breastpin being found con- 
cealed in the hem of a man's woolen shirt after he had 
been searched daily for weeks. And every day some 
such new find was made, and, of course, kept by the 
finder as spoils of war. 

The old democratic maxim, " To the victor belongs 
the spoils," was never more thoroughly practiced than 
by those same democrats who had charge of that rebel 
prison. 

The search of the new comers was always more 
thorough than the rest. Our party, being warned, did 
not furnish much in the way of spoils, though every 
man who had failed to slit his clothes lost them. Some- 
times the reb. would exchange what he had on for what 
the Yank had and sometimes he would take it without 
exchange. 

The only thing that I had left which seemed to 
excite the cupidity of the cowardly set was a pair of 
suspenders. These, one of the Johnnies ordered me to 



ijo THE SMOKED YAMK. 

take off. I refused. We had some words and he 
stepped back and cocked his gun. A dozen men spoke 
up urging me to give up the suspenders, saying they were 
not worth the risk of being shot. I gave them up, 
though my own opinion was that the man would 
not have shot had I braved it out. 

Many ingenious plans were contrived to conceal 
valuables. Some took apart the brass buttons on their 
coats and neatly put them together again with green- 
backs inside. Others took the heels off from boots or 
shoes and hollowed them out so as to hide in them 
money, jewelry, etc., but the button and heel racket, as 
the boys would say these days, the rebels caught on to, 
and one day every brass button was taken from the 
room and every heel examined. 

Thomas Davidson of our party had $qo in green 
backs and kept it through all searches. He kept it 
between some dirty pieces of brown paper and when- 
ever the Johnnies began to search, he laid his dirty 
brown paper on the floor among other litter and let the 
robbers tread on it. 

We had not been in this room many days when a 
rebel put in an appearance who was to us the type of a 
new species. He was a young fellow, not over twenty, 
tall, slim, black hair, black eyes, smooth face, and very 
Jiandsome. " Handsome is that handsome does," had 
no application to him. He was a handsome rascal, but 
there was a reckless abandon, a good humored deviltry 
about his rascality, that compelled a kind of ad- 
miration. 

When he first entered the room he announced that 



THE SMOKED YANK. 71 

he was a prisoner, too, and had come to form the 
acqaintance of his fellow prisoners. 

He was dressed in a neatly-fitting suit of home-spun 
butternut. Long-tailed frock coat, closely fitting pants, 
broad brimmed hat, and high heeled calf boots. His 
small hands and long tapered fingers and small feet 
betokened a long line of genteelly worthless, if not gen- 
teel, ancestry. He wore a belt and two six-shooters of 
the best pattern, and had spurs on his boots. He was 
under arrest and awaiting trial, as he told us, for some 
scrape he had been in where a few negroes had been 
killed. 

On his second visit he complained that he had n't 
had a gallop for so long that he feared that he would 
forget how to ride, and wanted to know if some Yank 
did n't want to plaf horse. Whether or not anyone 
volunteered I cannot now remember, but he was soon 
riding Yanks whether they wanted him to or not. He 
climbed on their backs and would make them gallop, as 
he called it, up and down the room, using his spurs the 
same as he would on a horse. 

The guards seemed to be afraid of him and the 
prisoners were either afraid or deemed it more prudent 
to submit to his devilment than to have a row. 

Carr, however, declared that if he was ever called 
on to play horse he would pitch the rider through the 
window. Some one told the rebel what Carr had said, 
and so he proposed to ride Carr. 

" All right," said Carr, "you are welcome to ride 
me if you can, but do n't blame me if you get hurt. I 
am an ornery sort of a cuss, anyway, and I do n't know 



72 THE SMOKED TANK. 

what kind of an animal I would make if I were turned 
into a horse." 

Those of us who knew Carr best dreaded the re- 
sult. We felt that this rebel must be a favorite with 
the officers in charge, or they would not permit his 
wild capers that had become notorious, and although 
we believed Carr could take care of himself notwith- 
standing the revolvers the rebel wore, we could not tell 
what the rebel officers might do if the man should be 
hurt. We tried to get the rebel to play some other 
game. He would not. He wanted to break in a new 
horse. 

Carr walked to one end of the room. The rebel 
got on, and Carr sure enough started as fast as he could 
go for the window at the other end of the room, but 
the rebel, having been warned, got off before the win- 
dow was reached. He began to bluster, but had hardly 
time to utter a word before Carr was standing close in 
front of him. For a moment those two black-eyed men 
glared at each other. Carr spoke no word, but some- 
thing that the rebel saw in his flashing eyes and pallid 
face caused him to turn on his heel and propose some 
other game. 

One day some new prisoners, " fresh fish," were 
brought in. They were from the Marine Brigade — 
Germans — at least the two officers, a captain and a lieu- 
tenant, were Germans. The captain had on a fine pair 
of high-topped, patent leather cavalry boots. He also 
had a fine meerschaum pipe, a handsomely trimmed, 
well-filled bag of the best tobacco, and some money. 

Our rebel tormentor began at once to make love to 




THE CAPTAIN OF THE "SEAHORSE CAVALRY" LOSES HIS BOOTS. 



THE SMOKED TANK. 73 

this Dutch Captain. He smoked and praised his pipe, 
admired his boots and told the captain that he would 
stand by him and see that these things were not taken 
by the rebel guard. And stand by him he did, for 
when the new guard came in and the " fresh fish " stood 
up with the rest of us to be counted and robbed, this 
rebel rascal led the captain to one side and the guards 
did not offer to disobey his commands that they should 
let this prisoner alone. 

That night we were all awakened by loud swearing 
in Dutch brogue and a big racket generally: " Help! 
Help! Mein Gott! Mein Gott! Mein Gott in Himmel!! 
Help everybodies! Help! Help!" and other such ex- 
clamations were coming from the Dutch captain, who 
was being dragged around the room by his rebel pro- 
tector. The rebel had secured the pipe, tobacco and 
money, and was engaged in removing the boots, which 
the captain had for safety not taken off when he went 
to bed. Our sympathies were, of course, with the cap- 
tain, but the scene as a sequel to the solicitous friend- 
ship of the previous day, and the mixture of Dutch 
and Dutch brogue, that poured from the mouth of the 
captain, was so comical that we could not restrain our 
laughter. The captain always said afterwards that 
" Doze Yankee vat makes de big laugh bes a dam site 
vurse in my esteem dan der Johnnies vot stole mine 
boots." 

The next day the rebel brought in a cob pipe for 
the captain and allowed him to fill it from the orna- 
mental tobacco pouch. The rebel was smoking the 
meerschaum pipe, which he said had been presented to 



74 THE SMOKED TANK. 

him by one of the officers of the " Sea Horse Cavalry." 
These were samples of the capers of that handsome 
rascal. He was one of a very numerous class well 
described by Sherman on page ^2;], of Volume I. of his 
memoirs, where he says: 

" Fourth. The young bloods of the South, sons of 
planters, lawyers about towns, good billiard players and 
sportsmen, men who never did do any work and never 
will. War suits them and the rascals are brave, fine 
riders, bold to rashness, and dangerous subjects in every 
sense. They care not a sou for niggers, land, or any- 
thing. They hate Yankees per se, and do n't bother 
their brains about the past, present or future. As long 
as they have good horses, plenty of forage and an open 
country, they are happy. This is a larger class than 
most men suppose, and they are the most dangerous 
set of men that this war has turned loose upon the 
world. They are splendid riders, first-rate shots and 
utterly reckless. ****** They are the best 
cavalry in the world, but it will tax Mr. Chase's genius 
for finance to supply them with horses. At present 
horses cost them nothing, for they take where they find 
and do n't bother their brains who is to pay for them; 
the same may be said of the corn fields, which have, as 
they believe, been cultivated by a good-natured people 
for their especial benefit. We propose to share with 
them the free use of the corn fields, planted by willing 
hands that will never gather the crops." 



CHAPTER IX. 

MOVED TO CAHABA, ALABAMA — A LITTLE LEAVEN FOR THE 
LOAF — I BORROW BOOKS, WRITE NOTES, AND BECOME 
SENTIMENTAL — A PROMISING ROMANCE NIPPED IN THE 
BUD. 

The railroads from Canton, east, having been des- 
troyed by Sherman on his Meridian campaign, we were 
marched on foot across the country. For rations, we 
were given each night a sack of meal and some meat. 
Our guards seemed to think we needed nothing to cook 
in. We mixed the meal with water in buckets, and 
then baked it by our camp-fire, either by filling a husk 
from an ear of corn, tying the end and covering it in 
the ashes, or by spreading stiff dough on a board and 
standing it up before the fire. 

After several days of such marching we arrived 
footsore and weary at a railroad station, and from there 
we were taken on the cars to Selma, Alabama. 

The country between the Tombigbee and Alabama 
rivers that we crossed on the way, seemed to me then 
to be the finest and richest that I had ever seen. From 
Selma, we were taken to Cahaba, twelve miles below, 
on the Alabama river. Here we joined a still larger 
body of Union soldiers who had been taken prisoners. 
With our party, there were in all five or six hundred. 

The prison was a large cotton warehouse. The 
outer wall was of brick and enclosed a large circle. In- 
side, a circle of posts twenty or thirty feet from the 



76 THE SMOKED TANK. 

wall supported the roof which sloped outward to the 
wall. The circle inside the posts was uncovered. Under 
a portion of the roof, bunks had been built, one over 
another, for the prisoners to sleep on. These were 
more than full before our arrival and we had to take 
up our quarters on the ground, there being no floor in 
the enclosure. 

We were here two or three weeks, during which 
time nothing of importance transpired. We thought 
then that we were most inhumanly treated because we 
were given no bedding or blankets, and nothing but the 
ground to sleep on. Otherwise, we had nothing to 
complain of; our food was wholesome and sufficient. 

The two officers in charge of the prison, a captain 
and a lieutenant, whose names I would gladly mention 
if I could remember them, were gentlemen. We did 
not know enough then about life in rebel prisons to 
fully appreciate their kindness. Every day on the ar- 
rival of the mail, one of them would bring in a late 
paper, stand up on a box and read the news. In many 
other ways, such as procuring writing material and for- 
warding letters for us, they manifested such kindly 
feeling as one honorable soldier will always manifest 
toward a brother soldier, enemy though he be, in 
misfortune. 

On our arrival at Cahaba, we were taken, a few at 
a time, into a room, where these officers had each of us 
thoroughly searched, telling us at the same time to give 
up everything in the line of knives, jewelry, watches, or 
money, and that they would keep a list of everything 
and return all at a proper time^ We thought this a 



THE SMOKED YANK. 77 

ruse to get us to give up what few things we had man- 
aged to secrete from all previous searches. Let it be 
said to their honor, that they carried out their promises 
to the letter, and that when we were taken from Cahaba 
to Andersonville prison-pen, they came in and re- 
turned to every Cahaba prisoner the articles taken, as 
shown by the list. They then expressed their sorrow 
and shame for the horrors of that awful place. 

One thing they did which was wrong, if they did it 
knowingly. The day we were to leave Cahaba, one of 
them came in to read as usual, and read from a paper 
a long account of an arrangement having been made 
for an exchange of prisoners. They led us to believe 
that we were to be taken at once to the place agreed 
on for exchange, thus preventing many of us from mak- 
ing an attempt to escape, as we surely would have done, 
had we not been deluded by the hope of exchange. 

I must not, however, leave Cahaba without mention 
of one example of truly chivalrous conduct. Soon 
after entering that prison, I noticed that many of the 
prisoners were reading books, and pamphlets, histories, 
novels, and books on philosophy, science, and religion. 
Some of these books were new and nicely bound, 
others much worn and evidently the worse for prison 
use. By inquiring, I found that these books were fur- 
nished to the prisoners by a young lady who lived near 
the prison, and that by sending a request by one of the 
rebel guards, I could get a book. I accordingly wrote 
a polite note, saying that I would be glad to borrow 
something to read, and sent it to this lady by one of 
the rebel guards. He returned with one of Scott's 



78 THE SMOKED TANK. 

novels. Having read this, I returned it and got 
another, and had something to read all the time I was 
there, as did every other prisoner who so desired. 

The books she sent, whether all her own or bor- 
rowed in part, were almost all so badly worn and soiled 
by the constant use in hands none too clean, as to be of 
little value afterward. In fact, that young lady sacrificed 
her library for our sakes; and, in doing so, she furnished 
the only example that I ever witnessed or of which I 
have ever heard, of disinterested kindness to a Yankee 
prisoner from a rebel lady. 

The note I sent out for books was addressed to 
Miss Belle Gardner. Returning the first book obtained, 
I sent a note of thanks and a request for another book 
and so on, making each note a little longer and a little 
less formal until I drew from her a short note in reply. 
Then with each new book I got a note. 

Young as I was, naturally fond of adventure, and 
the natural bent of my mind stimulated by constant 
reading of Scott's, Bulwer's and other novels, is it any 
wonder that my correspondence with this young lady 
began to seem to me romantic, and that I began to en- 
tertain for her feelings stronger than those of grati- 
tude? I was not head over heels in love, badly mashed 
as you boys of to-day would say, but I was conscious of 
a turbulent desire to see my kind but unknown cor- 
respondent. 

There was an enclosure or yard around the door 
of the prison where we did our washing and cooking. It 
was a high board fence, the boards nailed on up and 
down close together. Only those whose turn it was 




EAGER FOR A GLIMPSE OF THE DAMSEL. 



THE SMOKED TANK. 79 

to do the cooking for a mess were allowed to be in 
this yard. One day when I was out there as cook, I 
ascertained from a guard that Miss Belle lived in a 
house across the street. Then I enlarged the crack 
between two boards of the fence with a jack-knife, 
making a hole large enough so that I could get a good 
view of the house. There was no trouble about getting 
into this yard; all I had to do was to take the place of 
some one whose turn it was to cook and who found no 
pleasure in the task. For several days, most of my 
time was spent at my hole in the wall, eager for a 
glimpse of the damsel whom my excited imagination 
had pictured as possessing all the beauty, loveliness, 
grace and other heroine qualities of a Rebecca. 

My vigils were never rewarded. I sent her a note 
requesting her to appear at a certain hour on the porch. 
She never appeared. Then I cultivated the acquaint- 
ance of one of the guards, and was in a fair way to ar- 
range through him for a meeting outside the prison, 
when orders came for our removal, and the conditions 
and materials for an exquisite romance in real life were 
rudely broken and scattered. 



CHAPTER X. 

CAHABA REVISITED IN 1 884 — A DELIGHTFUL RIDE — THE 
FREEDMEN OF THE SOUTH — A DESERTED VILLAGE — AN 
OLD MANSION — MRS. GARDNER, " THE FRIEND OF THE 
UNFORTUNATE." 

In the spring of 1884, just after the opening chap- 
ter of this little book was written, finding it almost im- 
possible to write with any satisfaction while subject to 
the usual interruptions and annoyance of business life, 
I resolved to cut loose from all communications and 
devote a few weeks exclusively to the work in hand. 
Besides, I had often thought I would like to see that 
Southern country again, and that a trip over the old 
war path would quicken my recollection of the places 
and incidents about which I wished to write. Of course 
I visited Cahaba. 

I arrived at Selma early in April, just twenty years 
to a day from the time I went through there a prisoner 
of war. 

Selma is a beautiful city of five or six thousand 
people, situated on the Alabama river, and in the 
"black belt" of Alabama. Had always supposed that 
the "black belt" of Alabama was a region where black 
negroes were thicker than elsewhere. It is the region 
of black soil. I was not far out of the way, however, 
because the negroes are thicker in the " black belt " 
than elsewhere. 

I shall always remember with pleasure my ride on 



THE SMOKED TANK. 8i 

that delightful April morning from Selma down the 
river to Cahaba. April there corresponds to June here 
in South Dakota. I rode horseback. It was to me like 
riding through a botanical paradise. Spring-time just 
blooming into summer and such a profusion of flowers. 
There were great trees loaded with blossoms, and the 
ground was covered with flowers in full bloom. Where 
the road passed through cultivated land, the hedge on 
each side was covered with the Cherokee rose, and was 
a solid mass of variegated color. There were great, 
tall pine trees covered to the top with the blossoms of 
the Cherokee rose. And then the music in the air 
from the thousands of feathered songsters, each sing- 
ing as though it were trying to drown the notes of all 
the rest. 

It was Saturday, and market day. The road was 
thronged with negroes going to market. What subjects 
there for an artist's sketch-book. All kinds and condi- 
tions of the farming class of negroes. Some on foot, 
carrying bundles on their heads. Some on mules or 
horses, carrying all manner of truck before and behind; 
some in carts or wagons drawn by mules or horses, or a 
horse and a mule, and sometimes a mule and an ox. 
Old, broken-down horses, lame or blind, or both, 
hitched to older and worse broken buggies and car- 
riages, with old straps and ropes, which were tied 
together for harness. Men, women, and children; 
it seemed as though no member of any family had staid 
at home. Chickens, ducks, geese, pigs, sheep, a fatted 
calf, garden truck, butter, eggs, and one bale of cotton, 
were being hauled, carried or " toted " to market. 



Bi THE SMOKED YANK. 

One day spent at the market in Selma, on market- 
day, will give a man a better idea of the condition of 
the freedmen of the South than he can get by reading 
all the speeches on that subject that have been printed 
in the Congressional Globe, during the last twenty 
years. 

I had remembered Cahaba as a bright little town 
of two or three thousand inhabitants. As I approached 
the place that morning, I noticed with some surprise 
that the road instead of becoming better traveled, was 
dwindling away to a mere wood road, such as the use 
from an ordinary farm would make. Coming out of 
the woods to the river bank and looking across to 
where I expected to see a city, behold there were but a 
few; and those apparently abandoned, houses. There 
is an old-fashioned ferry worked with poles. It takes 
nearly an hour of yelling to bring the ferryman, who 
explains to me that " De City of Cahaba mos' all been 
moved to Selma." Cahaba was once the capital of 
Alabama. Before the war, it was the county seat and 
a prosperous place; had a railroad; the county seat was 
moved to Selma, and then the town died. The railroad 
was abandoned, and most of the brick houses were 
taken down and transported on boats to Selma and 
other places. To a Northern man, it seems strange 
that a town located on a navigable river, with railroad 
communications could be brought so low. 

There was nothing there, not even a brick or stone, 
nothing but a rank growth of weeds to mark the place 
where the old prison warehouse stood. Only a few 
white families were left in the place, and these were 



THE SMOKED TANK. 83 

very poor. I found a white man, George Brenner, who 
was one of the guards when the Yankee prisoners were 
there. He knew the Gardners; was Hving in the house 
that was occupied by them when I was a prisoner. It 
was not the house that I had watched so long and so 
anxiously through my hole in the fence. I had been 
the victim of a guard's mistake. This man told me that 
the Gardners were living in Selma. 

I was much interested in this " Deserted Village." 
It is a charming site for a city, and on the banks of one 
of the most beautiful rivers in the world. 

About half a mile from the center of the old town, 
there stands an old mansion, not old enough to have 
shown the ravages of time had there been no years of 
neglect, which is, on a smaller scale, almost a fac-simile 
of the White House at Washington. It is white, 
finished on the outside in imitation of stone, has an im- 
posing porch with Grecian columns, grand hall and 
stairway, and large rooms with high ceilings. The ex- 
tensive grounds are artistically laid out. There are 
graveled walks, flowers, shrubbery, and trees in endless 
variety. There are two artesian wells, one of them 
said to be the second in rank in all the world, measured 
by the force with which the water comes out. It was 
out of repair when I was there, but the old woman in 
charge said that if I were to drop a twenty-dollar gold 
piece into the pipe, it would fly right up in the air. I 
took her word for it. 

All this property is under the charge of one old 
negro woman. She had lived there a long time before 
the war as a slave, and I sat for hours listening to her 



84 THE SMOKED YANK. 

stories of the grand old times she used to see in that 
mansion ; weddings, balls, parties that lasted for weeks. 
It was one of the places where in her days of wealth 
and lavish hospitality, the "Sunny South" had been 
wont to gather her "beauty and her chivalry." 

What a delightful story it would make if some such 
writer as Cable should re-people that old town and that 
old mansion, and weave into fiction the facts that such 
old negroes could give. 

I found Mrs. Amanda Gardner living with her 
daughter Belle, in a rented house in Selma. She is over 
60 years old, but quite active for one of that age. She 
is of good family, and in every sense, a lady of culture 
and refinement. She is a fluent talker and uses elegant 
language. One of the leading men of the place told me 
that Mrs. Gardner had the reputation of being one of 
the kindest-hearted and most intelligent women in the 
country. The daughter, Belle, is a dressmaker, an 
occupation she very much dislikes, but is compelled to 
follow, in order to earn a living for herself and mother. 
Belle was only a little girl of thirteen or fourteen, in 
April, 1864, and wore short dresses. 

Mrs. Gardner was during the war, and still is, for 
that matter, a thorough rebel. That is, she believed 
the South was right, and still believes so. She had one 
son killed early in the war, and another, a mere boy, 
was in the service and was taken prisoner at Selma, by 
General Wilson's cavalry. Wilson's men had heard of 
Mrs. Gardner's kindness to Union prisoners, and as a 
token of appreciation, they set her boy at liberty and 
sent him home to his mother. 



THE SMOKED YANK. 85 

Mrs. Gardner said that when the prison was 
established at Cahaba, she had a large library of choice 
books that had been given to her by her uncle, Judge 
Beverly Walker, of Augusta. It was his private library, 
and he gave it to her when he broke up house-keeping. 
She said that her heart was moved to pity by the forlorn 
condition of the prisoners, and she began to loan them 
books. She had all the standard poets, in handsome 
binding. Scott's, Dickens', and Lytton's novels, and 
many others in complete sets. Histories, biographies, 
books of travel, works on science, philosophy, and 
religion. A large and well-selected private library. 
Nearly all of these books were completely worn out. 
Only those in calf binding and on the less interesting 
subjects of philosophy, science, and religion, were left 
whole, and even these were much worn and soiled. I 
saw in a second-hand store and auction house at Selma, 
where she had placed them for sale, two or three dozen 
of those worn and soiled books, all that was left of Mrs. 
Gardner's once elegant library. 

Lending books was not all that Mrs. Gardner did. 
She took especial interest in those that became sick, 
and procured and furnished them with suitable food 
and medicines. Several were nursed in her own house. 
When winter came, many of the prisoners had no 
blankets and but little clothing. She gave them every- 
thing she had in her house that she could possibly 
spare, and procured all she could from her neighbors. 
Said she took up every carpet she had and cut it into 
pieces the size of a blanket, in order to relieve the 
sufferings of those poor prisoners. 



86 THE SMOKED TANK. 

These things were not done in a corner. Mrs. 
Gardner was arraigned, either before the church or 
some citizens' meeting, on the charge of being a Union 
woman, and of furnishing aid and comfort to the 
enemy. Captain H. H. N. Henderson, who had the 
immediate charge of the prison, came to her relief and 
boldly defended her, endorsing all she had done. Had 
it not been for his assistance, she would doubtless have 
been found guilty, and banished. I presume that he is 
the officer that had charge of the prison when I was 
there, and who went with us to Andersonville. 

Mrs. Gardner showed me over one hundred notes 
written by prisoners, some addressed to her, and some 
to Miss Belle. These tell the story of what she did, 
and at the same time furnish indisputable proof of it. 
She had two bundles of these notes containing request 
and acknowledgments, but she lost one bundle when 
she moved from Cahaba to Selma. I did not find 
among those she had, any that were written by myself. 
She has also received since the war a good many letters 
from prisoners whom she befriended, and some have 
remembered her with presents. 

When I saw the proofs that Mrs. Gardner possessed 
of the things she did, and the sacrifices she made for 
Union prisoners, I supposed it would be the easiest 
thing in the world to get Congress to pass an act 
for her relief and remuneration. I at once opened 
correspondence with senators and members of 
the House. They all said to pass such an act 
would be to let down the bars for thousands of 
other claims in which there was no merit. It 



THE SMOKED YANK. 87 

would be a precedent that they dare not estabHsh. 
Something ought to be done for Mrs. Gardner. 
She is old and poor, and is probably the only southern 
lady of rebel sentiments, who actuated by Christian 
charity alone, furnished aid and comfort to distressed 
Union prisoners. 



Note. — Mrs. Amanda Gardner is now living with her daughter Belle, in 
New York. She is at this date, February, 1888, seventy-two years old. Her 
address is No. 4 West Thirteenth street. The following are samples of the notes 
she has kept that were sent her by Union prisoners: 

Military Prison, \ 
Cahaba, Ala., June 4th, \ 
Mrs. Amanda Gardner: Will you please send some books to the sub- 
scribers to while away the hours of prison life. Respectfully, 

J. R. BOWEN, 
Chas. Reynolds, 
Chas, Harris, 
James Farrelt.. 



Castle Morgan, June 5th. 
Mrs. Amanda Gardner: Please accept my thanks for the loan of this; be 
kind enough to send me another. Chas. Harris, 

Co. K, 13th Ills. Vol. 



Cahaba Prison, March 14th. 
Mrs. Gardner: If you please to send me some nice interesting book to read 
and I will return it with care. B. F. Daughtery, 

Private of Co. 8, 37th Reg't. Ills. Inft. Vol. 

Prison. 
Mrs. Gardner: Will you please let five of us have your washing machine 
and tub to wash some clothes. Clement Ballinger. 



Cahaba, Ala., March 5, 1865. 
Mrs. Amanda Gardner: 

Kind Madam — We are all about to bid farewell to Castle Morgan. Some 
are already on their homeward journey; we will soon follow, rejoicing we are 
once more free . I feel I cannot leave without first expressing my heartfelt 
thanks to you for the noble and humane kindness you have so generously be- 
stowed upon the prisoners while confined here; aiding them by the kind dispensa- 
tion of your books among them, to while away the tedious hours of captivity both 
pleasantly and instructively, which otherwise would have been passed in discon- 
tent and lonesome weariness. I regret exceedingly, that there were some among 
them, who were so worthless, as to abuse your books in a shameful manner, but 
the majority appreciating the noble impul.-es of thy generous heart, were careful 
in the use of the works, knowing full well that you were making a noble sacrifice 



88 THE SMOKED YANK. 

of your library for their benefit. I regret that one of the books returned to you 
entitled "Famous Persons and Places," is so badly abused; it was stolen from 
me and for a long time I knew not what had become of it; after making repeated 
inquiries it was returned to me in its present condition. Trusting you will par- 
don me, as I regret exceedingly that such a thing occurred. Be assured, kind 
Madam, that when we are once more surrounded by kind and loving friends, and 
in the enjoyment of all that makes life happy and ,igieeable, our thoughts will 
often revert to our kind Benefactress at Cahaba; many a silent prayer will be 
sent heavenward, that you and your lovely family may be spared the horrors of 
♦.his unnatural and relentless war. Many a man will speak in glowing terms oi 
thy noble generosity, and you will ever be remembered as a friend of the unfor- 
tunate. The day is not far distant when Peace the great tranquilizer, will again 
unite o:x distracted country in perfect harmony and unity. The end is fast 
approachi.g when we may again enjoy all the requisites that make life both 
pleasant and agreeable. OVvV and Religious Liberty is just as sure to rule 
supreme, as Jehovah guides the Universe. 

May Heaven's richest blessings descend upon you and your darling family; 
and when you are called hence to that "bourne whence no traveler returns," 
may you ascend to that glorious abode of angels, "where wars, and rumors of 
wars are never heard," is the wish of one who is happy to subscribe himself your 
well wisher. Farewell. 

Very respectfully, 

C. W. HAYES, 
Hospital Steward, 3rd. Ills. Vol. Cavalry. 

Cahaba Prison. 
Mrs. Gardner: Will you please send a book to read. I will take care of it, 
and return it in good order. Geo. H. Chadwick, 

Co. C, 1st Ills. Cav. 



Mrs. Gardner: May the blessing of God ever descend upon thy devoted 
head, for your kind consideration concerning the unfortunate, is the prayer of one 
who appreciates the noble impulses of thy generous heart. 

Yours in friendship, A Prisoner. 

Address: 

''Mrs. Amanda Gardner, 

Cahaba, Alabama. 
A lady of excellent worth, and a friend to those in distress." 

Cahaba, Ala.. Prison, ) 
April II, 1864. \ 
Mrs. Gardner: Please lend me " Botta's History." I will take good care 
of it and return when done. Your Ob't Serv't, J as. B. Slusser, 

3rd Ills. Cav. Vol. 

Castle Morgan, \ 
July 8, -64. S 
Mrs. A. Gardner: 

Dear Madam— I return the book that you lent me, and am very much 
obliged to you for It. I have taken the best care of it that I could. If you have 
the other volume of the same work. I would be very glad if you would lend it to 
me; and if not, I am glad to get any book that is interesting. 

Yours Respectfully, 

William English, 

Co. F, 7th Ky. Cav. 



THE SMOKED YANK. 89 

Cahaba, Ala., \ 
July nth, 1864. \ 
Madatn: In returning the accompanying books with many thanks, I would 
respectfully beg of you the loan of another/- Yours obediently, 

J. W. S. Beattie, 

2d La. Fed. Cavalry. 



Madam: Will you be so kind as to send me — a prisoner^one or two 
books to pass away the time. Having heard from our men how kind you have 
been in sending reading matter to them, I make so bold in addressinij you in my 
behalf. I have the honor to be, very respectfully, your obedient servant, 

Thos McElroy, 
To— Capt. U. S. Navy. 

Mrs. Gardner. 



Cahaba Prison, May 21st. 
Mrs. Gardner: Please excuse me for troubling you for a little vinegar, as I 
have a high fever every day and crave it and I believe it would do me much 
good. Yours with respect, Michael O'Farrel. 

iiSthlll. Mfd. Inft. 



April 15th, 1864. 
Will Mrs. Gardner please send me a book to read, and oblige. 

Very Resp't, James Miller, • 

4th U.S. Cav. 



Cahaba, Jan. i8th, 1864. 
Respected Madam: An unfortunate prisoner of war begs you will excuse 
the liberty he has taken in thus addressing you. Your many acts of kindness to 
us will ever be gratefully remembered. II possible to repay you, how gladly 
would we. But Madam we know your noble heart would resent any such offer- 
ing, and we have only the opportunity left us of returning you the heartfelt 
thanks of all the prisoners. And liow I trespass on your kindness still further. 
My time for service has nearly expired. I do most earnestly desire to be ex- 
changed. If within your power, by your kindly influence, to assist me, the re- 
membrance of the happiness you would confer on an unfortunate man, I am sure, 
would amply repay your generous nature. 

I am, most respectfully, 

ANDREW McFARLAND. 

Note — My mother secured his exchange, and he went his way rejoicing. 

— Belle Gardner. 



CHAPTER XI. 

WE LEAVE CAHABA — A SONG BATTLE — " LET THE DAMN 
YANKEES starve" — WE ENTER ANDERSONVILLE— WALK- 
ING MUMMIES AND SMOKED SKELETONS — DISCOURAGING 
PROSPECTS. 

I have already stated that we were moved from 
Cahaba to Andersonville. Before starting, three days' 
rations of meat, rice and meal were issued to us. 
Unfortunately, we cooked it all, and before we reached 
Montgomery, by steamboat— it is needless to remark 
that we were all deck passengers — our rations of rice 
and meal had soured, and could not be eaten. At Mont- 
gomery, the officers procured all the meal they could 
for us, but not enough to go round. There we were 
put on flat-cars, some in box-cars, and started, as we 
were told, to Savannah to be exchanged. 

At Columbus, our locomotive gave out and our ra- 
tions likewise, and we stopped for repairs. We were 
there from noon of one day until afternoon of the next. 
Although we were all without food and hungry, and 
made our necessities known to hundreds of people that 
flocked around to see us, an ear of corn each was all we 
received. I was satisfied that the officers in charge 
tried to do better by us, but there was no quartermaster 
there, and they had no money with which to pay for 
what the citizens were unwilling to give. We heard 
many such remarks as: " Let the damn Yankees starve. 
They will soon learn to do without eating and they may 



THE SMOKED TANK. 91 

as well begin now, etc." Had we known then what we 
soon after learned, we would surely have made a break 
for liberty. 

There was an old unoccupied hotel building near 
the railroad track, and our guards allowed some of us 
to go into it to pass the night. It was a beautiful moon- 
light-evening, and a crowd of young people, boys and 
young ladies, gathered there to see us. Some of our 
boys began to sing Union songs. Then the Southern 
girls gave us a rebel song, and directly we were having 
a song-battle, and turn about, we fired songs at each 
other until long into the night. 

At Fort Valley, in Georgia, we were turned on to 
a track that we knew did not lead to Savannah, and by 
inquiring from those who came around to see the Yan- 
kee prisoners, we learned that Andersonville, the great 
prison-pen, was on the road ahead of us. Our guards, 
too, were doubled there. But though our hopes of im- 
mediate exchange began to vanish, little did we dream 
what Andersonville meant. We supposed it to be some- 
thing like Cahaba, and though that was not a comfort- 
able place, it was endurable. We were out of food 
when we got to Columbus. Forty-eight hours after- 
ward, we came in sight of a stockade in which, we 
were told, there were 20,000 Union soldiers. Forty- 
eight hours without other food than a little corn, 
makes a healthy man hungry. I was not only healthy, 
but young and growing. I was hungry, but I thought 
to myself, in fact it was the expressed thought of all, 
we will soon be among friends who will be glad to re- 
lieve our pressing wants. In this instance, there was 



92 THE SMOKED TANK. 

more pleasure in anticipation than in participation. 

No pen, no words can describe, no pencil can 
approach the scene that burst upon our astonished eyes, 
as we entered the gate of that — I shall not call it in- 
fernal, nor terrible, nor horrible, nor hell's hole, but 
simply Andersonville; and hereafter when a writer 
would describe a misery so infernal, or depict a horror 
so atrocious that no suitable words can be found in any 
language, let him merely liken it unto the miseries and 
horrors of Andersonville. 

The sun was just setting when we started from the 
station to the prison. It was about dark when we 
reached the outer gate. As we approached, sounds 
came to our ears, at first like the roaring of the sea, 
heard a long way off. Drawing nearer, the noise 
resembled somewhat that made by a large army going 
into camp. It was unlike the noise of an army or 
the roar of a large city, because there were no sounds 
of wheels or rattle of tools. It was a Babel of human 
voices only. There was something strangely doleful 
and ominous, even in those sounds. 

The gates were thrown open. On each side of 
what seemed a street, leaving room for us to pass in 
column of twos, we saw a dense mass of beings. Those 
in the front ranks held in their hands cups, cans and 
little pails, and chunks of bread. They are there, we 
thought, to hand us food as we pass. We entered. 
The line on either side was a line of living, human 
skeletons, walking mummies ; ragged, many nearly 
naked, all skin and bone, black as Indians, not exactly 
smoked Yanks, but the smoked skeletons of Yanks. 



o 
o 

tz! 

<! 

1—1 

r 




THE SMOKED TANK. 93 

We were hungry. These men seemed to be starved. 
There they stood, their great eyes protruding beyond 
their gaunt and bony cheeks; their limbs, half covered, 
showed great swollen joints, black, bruised-looking 
elbows and knees, and great puff-balls for feet. The 
feet of many, looked like boxing gloves. All this we saw 
in sections, as it were, by the uncanny, flickering 
smoking light of a pine knot torch or a " fat" pine 
stick, that here and there one of the creatures held in 
his hand. 

"The brows of (these) men, by the despairing light, 
Wore an unearthly aspect, as by fits 
The flashes fell upon them. " 

Yes, nearly every one of the front rank had food or 
wood in his hands, but not to give. They were there to 
barter or to sell. The majority of us had nothing with 
which to buy, nothing to trade. We did not ask for 
anything. There was that in these surroundings which, 
if it did not make us forget our hunger, made us feel 
that our misery was not worthy of mention. I have 
noticed that beggars on a street do not solicit alms 
while a funeral procession is going by. 

We stood a long time in that street before we were 
assigned even a portion of bare ground on which to 
stretch our weary limbs. The two rebel officers who 
had been in charge of us ' from Cahaba, set about 
getting us something to eat. About lo o'clock, rations 
were sent in; a pint of corn meal and a little salt for 
each man. Raw meal and salt! How cook it? What 
in? What with? In all that pen, you couldn't pick up 
enough wood to make a match. We had nothing to 
draw our rations in, much less to cook them in. I 



94 THE SMOKED TANK. 

turned the sleeve of my jacket, tied the end with a 
piece of the Hning, and in this, received a quart of meal 
for myself and Lynn B. Cook. We were bunk-mates 
or bed-fellows, without either bunk or bed. Some 
mixed their meal and salt with a little water and ate it 
raw. Others bought or traded for a little wood and 
borrowed pans in which to bake. Cook and myself 
found a Grant county man from a Wisconsin regiment, 
who was kind enough to lend us a skillet and a little 
wood. Our hunger appeased, we lay down on the bare 
ground without cover or shelter, to sleep, and thus we 
passed our first night in Andersonville. 

The next norning we were counted off into 
divisions, ninety in a divison. Twelve divisions formed 
what was called a detachment. To each detachment 
was allotted a small piece of bare ground on which to 
camp. We were told that this bare ground to sleep on, 
a scant pint of meal, a quarter of a pound of meat or 
its equivalent in rice or beans, and a piece of green 
wood as large as a small piece of stove wood, these 
once each day, and a spoonfull of salt once each week, 
were what we would get, and all we would get to live on. 

Are we to have no tents, no blankets, nothing to 
cook in? No! Will we not be given, or allowed to 
get, forks and poles and brush with which to make a 
shelter that will protect us from the scorching sun 
and the pitiless rain? No! You have your ground, 
you will get your rations, nothing more. Is it 
surprising that we could hardly believe our ears, that 
stout hearts quailed, and strong men lost their courage 
and lay down broken in spirit? 



THE SMOKED TANK. 95 

Andersonville is situated in the sparsely settled 
piney woods of southern Georgia. It is a rolling 
country abounding in creeks and swamps. Pine trees 
cover the high land, and along the streams and swamps 
there are gum and other trees that flourish in wet soil, 
and thick underbrush. 

The prison was made by enclosing sixteen acres of 
this land by a stockade. The stockade was made of 
logs twenty-five feet long/ uniform in size, hewed on 
two sides, set upright and close together in a ditch five 
feet deep. The dirt being filled in and tamped around 
the bottom, these logs form a solid wooden wall 
twenty-five feet above the ground. On the outside of 
this wall, at regular intervals of about sixty yards, scaf- 
folds were built with steps leading up to them, and on 
these scaffolds, which were three feet lower than the 
top of the wall, the guards stood. 

On the inside of this wall and twenty-five feet from 
it, is the dead-line. This is a row of posts driven into 
the ground with poles or narrow boards nailed on top 
so as to form a railing three feet high all around the in- 
side of the stockade. 

This sixteen-acre pen or field, was a rectangle in 
form, the east and west sides longer than the north and 
south. A small stream ran through from west to east 
dividing the interior into what was called north and 
south sides. This stream furnished the water supply 
and the sewerage. The sink was at the lower end of 
the stream. Forks driven into the grounds supported 
poles upon which the prisoners sat, their droppings fall- 
ing into the stream. Above the sink, the stream was 



96 THE SMOKED YANK. 

used for washing and bathing. Water for cooking and 
drinking was obtained between the little bridge that 
crosses the stream and the dead-line on the west side. 
The ground on each side of this stream is a gently slop- 
ing hillside. Adjoining the creek on the north side 
there is about two acres of wet, boggy, miry, swamp. 

The entrances to the prison, two huge gates, are 
on the west side. One on each side of the creek and 
midway between creek and corner of stockade. There 
is a small stockade yard around each gate on the out- 
side. When prisoners are brought in, or the wagons 
loaded with rations, they pass through an outer gate 
into this yard, the outer gate is then barred before the 
gates to the main stockade k opened. This to prevent 
prisoners making a sudden rush for an open gate. The 
fastenings to these gates are on the outside. Leading 
across the prison from each gate there is a street wide 
enough to turn a wagon in. There are two or three 
other streets of considerable width. Leave out the 
creek and the two acres of swamp, the broader streets 
and the twenty-foot strip between the dead-line and the 
stockade, in all at least four acres, and you have left 
twelve acres for the prisoners to camp on, to cook, eat, 
and sleep on. There were 20,000 prisoners there when 
we entered. Twenty thousand on twelve acres. Six- 
teen hundred and sixty-six on one acre. Ten to each 
square rod. For each man not quite four by seven feet. 
Before that stockade was enlarged, there were at least 
30,000 prisoners inside of it, crowded on to those twelve 
acres. Less than three by six feet for each man, just 
enough for all to lie down on at once, not enough to 



THE SMOKED YANK. 



97 



have buried them all; giving to each a separate grave. 
In July, the stockade was enlarged. About six acres 
more of ground were taken in on the north side. Eight 
acres in all, about six available for use. The prisoners 
increased until there were 45,000. They were as thick 
then as before. The following table copied from 
McElroy's story of Southern Prisons, is a part of the 
report made by Surgeon Joseph Jones, who was sent by 
the Surgeon-General of the Confederate army to 
examine Andersonville: 



Month and Year. 









O s-i 



O XT 



53 ^ c 
-go § 



«« i; S^ 

i_ ra OJ 
« 3 (-, 



March, 1864. . 
April, 1864. . . 

May, 1864 

June, 1864. . . . 
July, 1864.... 
August, 1864. 



7,500 
10,000 
15,000 

22,291 
29,030 
32,899 



740,520 
740,520 
740,520 
740,520 
1,176,120 
1,176,120 



98.7 
74.0 
49 3 
33-2 
40-5 
35-7 



He gives the number of acres as seventeen at first, 
and twenty-seven afterward. He makes no deductions 
for dead-line, streets, or swamp, and he gives what he 
calls the "mean strength of prisoners." The size of 
the pen was as I have stated, also the number of 
prisoners there. There could be no mistake on these 
points because the prison was measured by different 
men, and the prisoners were counted daily. But take 
the rebel figures and you have less than five by seven 
feet for each man in June, and but a fraction over in 
August. 



CHAPTER XII. 

"answer at roll call, draw rations, and fight 

lice" — SCENES AT THE DEAD-LINE. 

The prisoners who were first turned into Anderson- 
ville in February, 1864, were from Belle Isle. These 
found the ground covered with underbrush, stumps and 
limbs of trees that had been used in making the stock- 
ade, and trees that were not large enough to make 
stockade logs. It was comparatively easy for these 
men to provide themselves with shelter. Some built 
huts two or three feet high on the sides with gable roof; 
others made dug-outs, by digging cellars and putting 
roofs over. The roofs were all made of brush woven 
together with a thatching of pine leaves on the outside. 
Others made neat little houses by bending poles so that 
both ends would stick in the ground; forming a frame 
like that of a cover to an emigrant wagon. These 
frames were thatched over the sides and top and one 
end. Those who came later, when wood and brush 
were not so plentiful, had two forks, a pole and blankets 
or pieces of tent-cloth stretched over, and thousands, 
who came as the Cahaba prisoners did, long after every 
limb and stump and pine leaf had either been consumed 
or had an owner, had no shelter whatever. These marked 
out their six by seven feet, for two, by ditching around 
it and raising the surface so that the wash from higher 
ground would not flow over it; and there most of them 
died. But few of the Cahaba prisoners had blankets, 



THE SMOKED TANK. 99 

fewer had anything in the shape of cooking utensils. 
Neither my bunk-mate, Cook, nor myself had anything 
except the ragged clothes we wore. 

On the first morning, it was the second day of 
May, the sun rose scorching hot. I went to the tent of 
the boy who had loaned us the skillet, and asked to 
borrow a cup so that I could go and get some water. I 
said to him, " How are we to live? What are we to do, 
who have no shelter?" " Live! Do! " said he, " Why, 
all you have to do is to answer at roll-call, draw your 
rations, and fight lice. If you want to live, do n't go 
near the dead-line." I soon found out that he had 
summed up the daily life of the average prisoner in 
Andersonville. 

With the borrowed cup I went for water. We had 
been warned to keep away from the dead-line. To 
cross it — it even to get hand, or foot, or head, a hair's 
breadth over — was instant death. The watchful guards, 
with unerring aim sent a bullet through every prisoner 
who by accident or otherwise trespassed on this line. 
They gave no warning, and I never knew of a shot 
being fired that did not kill a man. It was said that a 
thirty days' furlough was the reward for killing a 
prisoner at the dead-line. To get clean water for 
drinking or cooking, it was necessary to go near the 
dead-line where the stream came in. Many men were 
shot for merely reaching under the dead-line to get a 
canteen or cup of clean water. On that first morning, 
I stood within a few feet of one who was filling his can 
safely inside of the dead-line, when some others, 
struggling for a place to get water, accidentally pushed 



loo THE SMOKED YANK. 

him so that he fell with his head under the pole. That 
instant his brains and blood went floating down the 
stream and another rebel guard received the coveted 
furlough. 

Another time, I saw some starving men with long 
willow or cane poles, standing by the dead-line trying 
to kill for food, swallows that had built their mud nests 
in the cracks of the stockade, and in the twilight were 
skimming back and forth as swallows will. One poor, 
lean, hungry boy knocked a swallow down and reached 
a fraction too far in his effort to secure it. His spirit 
went home to Him who watches the sparrows when 
they fall, and another son of chivalry went home on a 
furlough. Such scenes were common. These shocked 
me more than others because I stood near by. 




SHOT AT THE DEAD LINE. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

EXTRA RATIONS — FLANKING OUT — COOKED RATIONS — THE 
huckster's cry, AND THE PEDDLEr's CALL — THE PLY- 
MOUTH PILGRIMS — DEAD YANKEES BECOME ARTICLES 
OF MERCHANDISE — I BUY A CORPSE AND TASTE PURE 
AIR — REPEATING. 

For thirty successive nights after we entered this 
pen, it rained hard every night. The days were 
scorching hot. The rain soaked us at night. The sun 
blistered by day. The nights were cold — at least they 
seemed cold. Food is the fuel that warms the body. 
We had not sufficient food, and, therefore, we were 
colder at night than well-fed men would have been. 
The cold made us hungry, and hunger in turn made us 
cold. 

Very few men were turned into Andersonville 
who lived very long without in some way securing more 
than the common ration to eat. For the first two or 
three weeks I lived, or rather slowly starved on the 
common ration. I weighed about i6o pounds when I 
entered the place. A few weeks after, my thumb and 
finger would meet around the largest part of my arm 
over the shirt and jacket sleeves. Every day while suf- 
fering from hunger, I would resolve and re-resolve that 
when I got my ration, I would divide it into three parts, 
be they ever so small, and eat at morning, noon and 
night. I never could do it. Every time the ration came, 
I devoured it all, and all was not enough. 



I02 THE SMOKED TANK. 

The wood that was issued with the rations, was ob- 
tained by letting a few men from each detachment go 
to the woods under guard and bring in what they could 
carry on their backs. One man was allowed to go each 
day from each division of ninety. What he could 
carry in was divided so much to each mess of ten. The 
cooking was done by messes, and the food when cooked 
was carefully divided into as many little piles as there 
were hungry men in the mess. Then one man would 
turn his back, and another pointing to a ration would 
say, "Who shall have this?" The man whose back 
was turned, sometimes he was blind-folded also, would 
call a name. As each man's name was called, he would 
step up and take his share. It always seemed to me 
that the smallest pile in the lot fell to me. 

Going out after wood was a coveted task. Only 
the strongest were chosen to go. When a prisoner 
could manage to get out with those who were selected 
to carry wood without being specially detailed from 
anv division, it was caHed " flanking out." 

The flanker kept for himself all that he could carry 
in. Lynn and myself soon learned the flanking game, 
and we soon managed to get enough pine boughs and 
limbs of trees to build quite a little house. Thomas 
Davidson, who had succeeded in eluding all searchers 
and carried into Andersonville $80 or $90 in greenbacks, 
joined Lynn and myself in making our shelter. When 
we had it finished and nicely thatched all over with pine 
boughs, and more pine boughs to sleep on, and a wide 
blanket which Davidson bought, to sleep under at night, 
we were living in the lap of luxury, as compared with 



THE SMOKED YANK. lo3 

those who were compelled to lie at night on the bare 
ground in the pelting rain, shivering and aching with the 
cold, and to endure without shade or shelter the scorch- 
ing sun at noon-day. 

We had been there but two or three weeks when, 
instead of raw meal and meat, our rations were brought 
in cooked. Then there was no more flanking out, be- 
cause there was no further use, that is no absolute neces- 
sity for wood. Those who were brought in after that 
without money or blankets, fared even worse than we, 
for there was no way for them to get any shelter. 
Neither must it be understood that many of the Cahaba 
prisoners were as fortunate as myself and Cook. 

The cooked rations were worse in many respects 
than the raw. When our meal and meat, or sometimes 
beans and molasses, or rice in place of the meat, came 
to us raw, we could cook it in various ways. We could 
make a stew with meal dumplings, or a soup of the 
beans. Or we could make bread or cakes of the meal, 
as we saw fit. Out of so little variety in food, skillful 
cooking could make many different dishes. When the 
cooked rations came, they were always the same. The 
meal was cooked in large pans for bread, or boiled into 
mush, and the meat always boiled. At the cook-house, 
usually strong bacon, sometimes beef, was put into great 
cauldrons and boiled. No pains were taken to dean it; 
then to save salt, the filthy slop from which the meat 
was taken, was used in mixing the meal. The meal was 
coarse and not sifted. When this cooking was done, 
the great, square loaves of corn-bread (they were about 
two by four feet, and four inches thick) were piled on 



I04 THE SMOKED YANK. 

wagons, the meat piled on the bread, and hauled into 
the prison. The beef brought in was always more or 
less tainted. The bacon was always strong. When 
mush was made and brought in in barrels, it was often 
sour. The result of eating this coarse bread, bran and 
all, and the greasy meat, was first to bring on diarrhoea. 
Weakened by this, the stomach soon became nauseated 
and refused the food. When the food made a man 
sick, and being sick, he could not eat the only food there 
was, starvation began. 

Thousands taken in this way lived but a few weeks. 
Those who recovered from the diarrhoea had next to 
battle with the scurvy. The scurvy could neither be 
prevented nor cured without vegetables, such as onions 
and potatoes, cabbages and melons. These, however, 
could only be had for money, and at a high price. And 
in this was the worst part of this awful life; men were 
starving, actually dying by hundreds every day for want 
of food, and all day long resounded in their ears the 
cries of hucksters vending their goods from stands, 
such as you will see at country fairs. 

"Walk up, gentlemen! Walk up, and get your nice, 
warm dinner! Roast meat and potatoes, wheat bread 
and pure coffee! Walk up, gentlemen! W^alk up, and 
get your nice, warm dinner! Here's your cool lemo- 
nade, made right here in the shade, and the best thing 
in the world for scurvy! Right this way, gentlemen, for 
your hot chicken soup! Bean soup! Bean soup! Bean 
soup, only five cents a dish! Bean soup! Bean soup! 
Ham and eggs! Ham and eggs! Right this way for 
your ham and eggs with johnny-cake, and huckleberry 



THE SMOKED TANK. 105 

pie for desert! Right this way, and get your choice din- 
ner for a dollar!" 

The larger huckster stands were located on the 
three or four principal streets of the prison, but smaller 
stands and peddlers could be seen everywhere, and no 
starving prisoner, though he had the will power to keep 
his eyes from feasting on what his stomach craved, but 
his hands dared not touch, could keep the peddler's cry 
and the huckster's call from sounding in his ears all day 
long, and far into the night. 

Why, you ask, were not these poor, starving pris- 
oners, relieved by those who had this provision to sell? 
Why are there out of prisons everywhere, and espec- 
ially in all great cities, the poor, the hungry, and the 
ragged, the sick, the lame and the blind, who are passed 
daily without relief, and without compassion by fellow- 
men rolling in wealth and debauched by luxury? An- 
dersonville was a world condensed with the forms and 
restraints of society left out. 

Let a ship sink in sight of the shore and a hundred 
helpless men who cannot swim be thrown into the sea 
— ten of them seize planks that will keep them from 
sinking. Does any man give his plank to one of the 
ninety who is about to go down? The prisoner turned 
into Andersonville with nothing, and depending wholly 
on his keepers for support, was as helpless and almost 
as sure to perish as the wrecked man without a plank 
in the sea. A blanket to cover him, a few boughs, out 
of which to form a shelter, a few dollars to dole out 
sparingly for daily wants, were to him as precious as the 
life-preserver is to the wrecked mariner at sea. 



i66 THE SMOKED TANK. 

Friends worked together and helped each other. 
Old comrades formed into messes and in a measure 
made common store, but the general rule was, every 
man for himself. 

There were men there well-dressed, even to dandy- 
ism, who sported watch and chain, had rolls of money 
and spent dollars at a meal. These could have given, 
but did not, just as millionaires who have more than 
they can ever possibly consume, think only of gain, and 
seldom give and grudgingly, to the struggling poor. 
Begging was almost as rare as giving. The poor fel- 
Jows seemed to realize that as a rule, to part with even 
a morsel of food was to lessen their chances for life. 
Tobacco was not considered one of the necessaries, and 
to ask a chew or pipe of tobacco was not considered 
begging, and when asked was seldom refused by those 
who had it in sight. 

Probably half the prisoners had resources other 
than the daily ration. There were hucksters, and 
peddlers, bakers, tailors, even jewelers, gamblers of 
every kind, chuck-luck, faro, poker, wheel of fortune, 
tricks and games of every variety were played and 
carried on openly and publicly. The rattle of dice, the 
whirring of wheels, and the cries to attract the crowd, 
chimed in with the huckster's call and peddler's cry to 
make the din and racket of the streets. All of these 
men thus engaged had something besides the daily 
ration. 

During the first few weeks, these things were not 
so extensively carried on. The prisoners who first 
entered Andersonville were from Belle Islane and other 



THE SMOKED TANK. 107 

prisons, and were poor, but from the time I got there, 
there were almost daily accessions of prisoners, fresh 
from the battle fields around Richmond, and from the 
armies of the west. These, especially those from 
around Richmond, were not searched and robbed as we 
had been, and as most prisoners taken from the west 
were. They came in, as we used to say, with flying 
colors, bringing blankets, knapsacks, canteens, and 
cooking utensils, money and jewelry. 

A brigade, several regiments and a battery, in all 
about 3,000 men, taken at Plymouth, N. C, had received 
their veteran bounty and new clothes, with which to go 
home on veteran furlough, but a few days before their 
capture. They were taken on conditional surrender, 
and one of the conditions was, that private property was 
to be respected. They came in about the middle of 
May, with their entire camp outfit, tents and all, and 
must have had an average of hundreds of dollars in 
money to the man. Previous to their arrival, hucksters 
handled but small stocks of tobacco, meal, beans, rice, 
potatoes, wood, etc., and the peddler's cry usually was, 
"Who wants to trade rice for beans! " or, " a pone of 
bread for a dish of soup!" or, "a ration of meat for a 
ration of meal! " and the gambling was all on a small 
scale. Soon after the arrival of the Plymouth prisoners, 
bedlam was indeed let loose. Peddlers and hucksters 
multiplied, gamblers and tricksters increased, and new 
kinds of business sprung up. 

The hucksters obtained supplies, in part from the 
prison suttler, who had a store in the prison under the 
protection of the rebels in command, and in part from 



io8 THE SMOKED TANK. 

those of the prisoners who went outside to carry out the 
sick to the hospital, or the dead to the dead-house, and 
who managed to carry on trade with the rebels on the 
outside, and smuggle in goods. The officers, too, who 
came in once a day, one or two to each division, to call 
the roll of the prisoners, were nearly all smugglers, and 
brought in tobacco, eggs, and other articles that they 
could conceal about their person, to trade and sell to the 
prisoners. 

The profits in smuggled goods were so much greater 
than on those bought at wholesale from the prison sut- 
tl«ir, that a separate branch of trade sprung up, which 
was selling chances to go outside. For instance, a sick 
man would go, or get his friends to carry him out to 
sick-call. If, on being examined by the rebel physician, 
he was ticketed for the hospital, and, if he could not 
walk, as was usually the case, there would be a chance 
for two other prisoners to go under guard and carry the 
sick man on a stretcher to the hospital. This chance to 
go out belonged to the companions who had assisted 
him to sick-call. They would often sell it to others 
engaged in the smuggling business, and the smuggler 
buying such a chance, would often realize a handsome 
profit on goods that he could buy on the outside of the 
guards and other traders, and bring in concealed in his 
clothes, or in the pine boughs, or a hollow log, which he 
would be allowed to carry in. 

In this way, the dead soon became articles of mer- 
chandise, and were bought and sold. The number that 
died in camp daily, especially in July and August, was 
from so to 1 20, according to the state of the weather. 



THE SMOKED YANK. 109 

After a stormy day and night, there would be many 
more dead than during the same number of hours 
of fair weather. The dead were carried' to the 
gate every morning, and laid in a line commencing at 
the dead-line and reaching back into the prison. 
Each corpse was carried to the dead-house on a 
stretcher by two prisoners guarded by a rebel soldier. 
The corpse of a prisoner belonged to his bed-fellow, 
if he had one, if not, to his mess-mates, who had the 
disposal of the chances (two of them) to go with the 
stretcher to the dead-house. Smugglers bought these 
chances, also. 

The first man brought to the dead-line in the morn- 
ing, would be taken out first, and they would be taken 
two or three at a time, according to the number of 
guards detailed. The first smugglers out in the morn- 
ing would have the best chance to trade, and so the 
chance to carry out the first corpse was worth more, 
and sold for more, than the chance to go out with one 
that would not be reached until later. It soon became 
the custom for the price of a corpse to be written on a 
piece of paper and pinned to the rags of the corpse. 
The first dozen or so, would be marked as high, some- 
times, as three dollars each, and if there were eighty or 
a hundred, in the row of corpses, as low as fifty cents 
would buy some of the last. If you paid three dollars 
for a corpse, you would get out early while trade was 
brisk, and before the best bargains were gone. If you 
paid fifty cents for a corpse, you had to sit by it perhaps 
until afternoon, and watch it to keep it from being 
stolen, and when it did come your turn to go, the stench 



no THE SMOKED YA;VK. 

of your corpse would make you sick, and chances for 
trade would be slim. 

I saw many fights over the disputed ownership of 
dead bodies. I remember one in particular. A poor, 
starved creature who seemed to have no friend, had 
for a long time been in the habit of coming at night and 
lying down just outside of my shanty, close up to the 
side where I slept. When he thus lay down, there 
would be nothing between us but a thin thatching of 
pine leaves. He was literally alive with vermin, and 
would no sooner lay down than I would be awakened by 
the lice crawling over my face, and would get up and 
drag the poor fellow away, sometimes twice in one night. 
One morning after I had thus dragged him away, I saw 
a bloody fight going on between two men, and going to 
the spot, found that they were fighting because each 
claimed to be the next friend, and, therefore, the owner 
of the body of the man who had died where I had left 
him. I often heard it said that death was sometimes 
assisted by the would-be mourners, that the corpse 
might reach the dead-line among the first in the 
morning. 

Great God! Think of it. Men brought so low by 
the thousand, systematically and purposely too, and by 
their own countrymen, civilized, christianized, chivalrous 
countrymen, that to save life, to get food and wood, 
where food and wood were plenty, they will barter and 
sell, and fight over the dead bodies of their friends. 
What are Heathen? 

I bought a chance once to go out with a dead body. 
I had to carry the end of a stretcher on which the head 



THE SMOKED YANK. in 

lay, because the man at the other end had been hungry 
so much that he was thin and weak. The stretcher was 
an old gunny-sack nailed to poles. The sack part was 
too short. The feet hung over it at one end and the 
head at mine. There had been no tender, loving hand, 
to close those eyes when the last breath had gone. 
They were open wide and glaring. The head hung over 
the end of the stretcher and the eyes glared up at me. 
They haunted me for weeks. I never bought another 
corpse. 

Aside from the sickening stench of that corpse, and 
the ghostly glaring of those open eyes, how unspeakably 
delightful were the moments I spent that morning out 
of the prison. You enter a conservatory or garden full 
of freshly blossomed flowers, and the odors are delicious, 
but you cannot discern the perfume of the green grass, 
and common plants, and trees of the hills and fields 
around you, because they are in your daily air. Neither 
can you detect the obnoxious odors of a room which 
you entered when the air was pure^ and stayed in until 
it was foul. So I did not know how foul the stench of 
the prison was until I went out that morning and tasted 
fresh air. The bark of the trees, the leaves, the grass, 
the decaying wood, the flowers, each had a distinct and 
easily-distinguished odor. The common air was frag- 
rant. I drank in great draughts of it as though it were 
a new, delicious and exhilarating beverage, and so it 
was. But when I re-entered the pen, the foulness there 
was just as noticeable as the fragrance outside had been, 
and I was sorry that I had gone at all. 

Besides the traders and peddlers who earned money 



112 THE SMOKED TANK. 

with which to buy extra rations, and those who brought 
money in, there were others who received extra rations. 
For instance, there was a Yankee sergeant or quarter- 
master for each detachment who received the provision 
each day for his detachment and divided it into as 
many parts as there were divisions in a detachment. 
He received three extra rations. Then the sergeant of 
each division who received from the detachment ser- 
geant and distributed to the sergeant of messes, re- 
ceived two extra rations, and mess sergeants, some of 
them, received one. Whether these extra rations were 
issued in addition to the rations for the common pri- 
soners or whether they w^ere taken from and diminished 
the daily supply for the prison, I cannot say. My opinion 
was that the latter was the fact. 

Others received extra rations by repeating. At 
roll-call each detachment formed in line, and a rebel 
sergeant, accompanied usually by one or two guards, 
came in to call the roll. They called the roll of one 
division of ninety at a time, and then counted the men 
in line to see that the number tallied with the roll; then 
passed to the next division, the whole detachment being 
required to stand in line until the roll of all the divisions 
was called. Suppose a man from the ist division died 
during the night, some man from some other division 
of the detachment would slip into the vacant place, 
stand there and answer to the dead man's name, and 
as soon as that division was counted, slip back to his 
place and be ready to answer to his own name in his 
own division. As there were as many rations issued 
each day as there were prisoners at roll-call each 



THE SMOKED 7'ANK, 



"3 



morning, the repeater would get an extra ration. 

The rebels knew that' something of the kind was 
going on, and they tried many schemes to prevent it, 
but never wholly succeeded. Probably one-half of the 
prisoners at Andersonville, especially between June ist 
and September ist, of 1864, in one way or another of 
the several ways mentioned, secured more to eat than 
was provided for and issued to them by the authorities. 
Of this half, a large percentage lived, for Anderson- 
ville was naturally a healthy place. Of the other one- 
half who had no extra rations, no aid of any kind, and 
many no shelter, nearly the whole died. 

I have never met a survivor of Andersonville, 
whose daily ration of food during the whole, or at least, 
the most of the time he was there, was not in some way 
supplemented, and I very much doubt whether there is 
now a man living who endured five months of 1864 in 
Andersonville, with nothing to live on save what the 
rebels furnished. 



CHAPTER XIV. 

THE RAIDERS — LIMBER JIM — THE REGULATORS — EXECU- 
TION OF THE RAIDERS. 

The horrors of Andersonville did not result en- 
tirely from the prison system and management planned 
and authorized by the rebel authorities and their agents. 
It is even doubtful which furnished the most extreme 
cases of human cruelty and depravity, the rebels, or the 
prisoners themselves. When we first entered the place, 
we were cautioned to look out for raiders. These 
were at first a small band of roughs from New York 
City, who had been engaged previous to their capture, 
in what was called bounty jumping. They we're called 
*' bounty jumpers." Large bounties, or sums of money 
wen offered by the state to those who would enlist, and 
sometimes, a man who was drafted would pay a large 
sum to some other man to go as his substitute. These 
fellows, it was said, had been engaged in enlisting for 
these state and private bounties, remaining in the ser- 
vice long enough to get the money, and then taking the 
first opportunity to desert and go back and enlist again 
in some other place, under another name, and secure 
another bounty. They were confined at first at Belle 
Island, and there banded together to steal and rob, and 
there received the name of raiders. As the number of 
prisoners who had anything for robbers to take, in- 
creased, the raiders also grew in numbers and boldness. 
The accessions to the gang, were probably not all 



THE SMOKED YANK. 115 

bounty jumpers. At first, their operations were after 
the sneak-thief order. A haversack, or a blanket, or 
clothing would be snatched at night from some sleeping 
prisoners. The thief would run and soon be out of 
sight among the huts and tents, and pals of the raiders 
would put any pursuer off the track. Becoming bolder, 
they began to work in parties of five or six armed with 
clubs, and they would enter at night the sleeping place 
or tent of the victim marked in the daytime, and for- 
cibly take whatever suited their fancy, mercilessly 
clubbing, sometimes killing any unfortunate man who 
dared resist. And so they went from bad to worse. 
The Ninetys' organized to defend each other against 
the raiders, and then the raiders banded together and 
strengthened their forces. If a party of raiders, or an 
individual raider made an attempt to rob that led to 
the alarm of a Ninety, and could not escape with the 
plunder, a shrill blast from the whistle which each 
carried would bring others to the rescue; a bloody fight 
with knives and clubs would ensue, and almost always 
the raiders would be victorious, for they were a well- 
fed band of strong, desperate men, practiced and skilled 
in such warfare, and were under leaders whom they 
obeyed. A few such men attacking suddenly in the 
night could usually get away with their plunder before 
the surprised friends of the parties being robbed could 
gather in sufficient numbers to successfully resist. 

After the Plymouth prisoners came in, and money 
became plenty, the raiders became high-toned and did 
not stop to meddle with anything of less value than 
watches, jewelry and money. They carried things with 



ii6 THE SMOKED TANK. 

a high hand; the men engaged in trade, and others 
known to have money, were their chosen victims. The 
leaders even grew so bold as to go around in broad day- 
light and demand of the leading hucksters money, in 
return for which they would grant the hucksters exemp- 
tion from a raid for so long a time. Those who would 
not pay were spotted, as it was called, and soon paid a 
visit that left them penniless, and served as an example 
to terrify the rest. 

It soon became evident that murders were being 
committed. Men who had money or other valuables, 
would disappear, and their friends having no reason to 
believe they had made their escape, could find no trace 
of them. Suspicion pointed to the raiders, but there 
was no proof. Finally the raids became so common, 
the levying of blackmail so frequent and notorious, and 
so many men were missed whom it was supposed were 
murdered, that the whole prison began to be aroused, 
and the question of a general organization to establish 
rules and put down the raiders, was frequently dis- 
cussed. There seemed to be no one who dared to lead 
off in such a movement. The belief was universal that 
any man who dared to take the initiative, would be 
spotted and surely murdered by the raiders. Finally 
the raiders themselves aroused the very man who, of 
all others there, was best calculated to lead in breaking 
their power. This man was known as "Limber Jim," 

Limber Jim was one of the Cahaba prisoners. He 
was a tall, slim, wiry man, good looking, good hearted, 
full of energy, a lover of fun, and was at Cahaba, as at 
Andersonville, the best known and most popular man 



THE SMOKED YANK. , 117 

in the prison. He had, it was said, traveled with a cir- 
cus before the war, and it is very likely that as clown or 
actor in a circus he acquired not only his nickname, 
Limber Jim, but also the inexhaustible fund of anecdote 
and glibness of tongue that enabled him to be so enter- 
taining and rendered him so well known and popular. 
Soon after we entered Andersonville, "Limber," as we 
called him for short, invented "root beer." He obtained 
in some way a large barrel, filled it with water, sorghum, 
molasses, and corn meal. This mixture soon worked 
and acquired a sourish, sharp taste, similar to, but not 
nearly so pleasant, as the taste of the old-fashioned 
metheglin, made of honey and water. 

The sassafras tree abounds in that portion of 
Georgia, and Limber had obtained, by digging them 
from the ground in the prison, a lot of sassafras roots. 
These he boiled, and with the tea, flavored his beer, 
and called it "root beer." Mounted on his beer barrel, 
or on a box. Limber would draw a crowd by telling 
jokes or stories, or by singing a song, and then he would 
expatiate on the health-giving, disease-curing proper- 
ties of his "root beer." It was, according to his talk, a 
panacea for all the ills that prison life was heir to. It 
was good for scurvy, and that was the disease that 
scourged us most. When the Plymouth men came in. 
Limber got rich. He sold hundreds of barrels at 5 
cents a glass that cost less than that many cents per gal- 
lon. Then he went into trade generally, and besides 
beer kept everythii)g to sell that could be obtained. I 
have heard that he won money at poker, and ran a faro 
bank with great success. I did not see him do either. 



ii8 THE SMOKED YANK. 

I do know that he acquired a large amount of money — 
several thousand dollars. He secured for his mess a 
large tent that would hold twelve or fifteen men, pitched 
it on the South side, where the raiders were mostly 
congregated, had all of his mess-mates armed with 
knives and clubs, and had two of the largest and 
strongest men of the whole prison employed to stand 
guard over this tent at night, Here Limber and his 
guards and friends lived like kings. 

At first the raiders let Limber alone, probably be- 
cause he was such a favorite and had so many friends. 
Afterward they were kept off by his giant guards. 

One evening, however, Limber went down to the 
creek alone, and three of the boldest of the raiders saw 
him. This was the opportunity that they long had 
sought, but a sad day for them was the day they tackled 
Limber Jim. One big burly Irishman caught him from 
behind, put an arm around his neck, under his chin, 
drew him back and held him nearly choked, while the 
others searched his clothes. 

The day after the robbery of Limber Jim a plan 
for an organization was agreed upon by the leading 
men throughout the prison. The rebel authorities 
were consulted and persuaded to co-operate. A thou- 
sand picked men, called regulators, were got together, 
duly officered, armed with clubs and drilled, and war 
on the raiders was openly and formally declared. A 
police justice was elected and police headquarters estab- 
lished. Notice was given throughout the camp, invit- 
ing every prisoner who could identify and furnish proof 
against a raider to report at police headquarters. The 



THE SMOKED TANK. 119 

well-known and leading raiders were at once arrested 
by the regulators, Limber Jim acting as commander, 
and taken outside and there held in irons under strong 
guard. When all that could be identified were thus 
taken out, a jury of the sergeants of the detachments 
was selected to hear and take testimony against them. 
Six of them were, by this jury, indicted for murder in 
the first degree, and the bodies of the murdered vic- 
tims were found buried deep in the ground, under the 
tents of the leading raiders. These six were duly tried 
by a jury impaneled for the purpose. They were con- 
fronted with the witness against them, permitted to 
bring witnesses in their defense, and allowed the bene- 
fit of counsel. In fact, they were granted every right 
and privilege guaranteed to a citizen of the United 
States by the constitution. They were all found guilty 
by the jury, before whom they were charged, and were 
duly sentenced to be hung. 

For all the rest who were found guilty of crimes of 
lesser degrees than murder, for robbery, theft and the 
like, there seemed to be no better mode of punishment, 
so they were sentenced to "run the gauntlet." That is, 
all the prisoners who had been robbed, or clubbed, or 
raided, or otherwise maltreated by the raiders, were 
permitted to form a line on each side of the street lead- 
ing into the prison from the gate. The raiders were 
turned into the prison, one at a time, and to pass 
between these two lines of men, standing there, waiting 
for revenge, was "to run the gauntlet." 

Had the use of clubs been allowed no raider could 
have gone through alive. Blows and kicks were 



120 THE SMOKED TANK. 

unmercifully administered, and many barely escaped 
with life. As a rule, those who had been guilty of 
the most and the worst crimes received the hardest 
drubbing, for, first one and then another of the men in 
line would make his charge, stating what the raider 
had done, and those against whom the most charges 
were made fared the worst.^ 

When the time came for the execution of the six 
men convicted of murder, a regular scaffold was 
erected inside the prison. It was reported that the 
raiders had re-organized, and would make desperate 
effort to. rescue their leaders and companions at the 
scaffold, when they were brought in to be hung. Great 
precautions were taken to prevent the success of any 
such attempt, should it be made. 

The hour came. The thousand regulators were 
formed in a hollow square. The six doomed raiders, 
hand-cuffed and shackled, were marched in between a 
strong guard of rebel soldiers. They were conducted 
into the space left near the scaffold, and there turned 
over to the hangmen, Limber Jim being chief hangman, 
and then the guards went out, for the rebel authorities 
had decided to permit, but not to take any part in the 
execution of these raiders. The convicts were all 
Catholics, and at their request a priest was there to 
administer the sacrament, and perform the last rites 
of their religion. 

The hand-cuffs and shackles are removed and the 
six doomed men kneel with their priest to pray. All is 
still as death, for death is hovering over the scene. 
Suddenly one of them stands on his feet, and giving 



The smoked tank. m 

the shrill, rallying cry of the raiders, with a spring like 
that of a tiger on its prey, he leaps right into the teeth 
of the regulators, seizes a club, and in less time than I 
can tell it, clears the whole solid mass of regulators, 
and leaps and bounds away through the camp. 

What a scene! The whole 30,000 prisoners are 
looking on, thousands crowded close around the 
regulators, and when that raider breaks away every 
looker-on supposes that the dreaded raiders have made 
the threatened attempt to rescue, and every one starts 
at once to get away from the desperate struggle that 
is expected to follow. The result is, that the backward 
movement takes the crowd like a great wave, and they 
tumble over tents, into holes, off from buckets, boxes 
and whatever could be secured to stand on, tramping 
on each other, yelling, cursing, and fighting, as they 
go. It was a terrible panic, and many were sorely 
bruised, and some had arms, some legs broken in their 
falls. 

In the meantime the fleeing raider is hotly pursued. 
He dashes into tents, and out by lifting up the edge, 
dodges around shanties, and tries in vain to elude the 
sleuth-hounds on his track. He is caught! A mass of 
regulators gather around and form a hollow square, in 
the center of which, struggling still, he is carried back. 
There is no more waiting for religious ceremony. 
Again, all is still. The raiders beg and plead for mercy. 
Their hands are pinioned behind them, the black cowls 
drawn over their heads, and they are led each by a 
hangman up the steps, on to the scaffold. There-, 
standing in a row, the loops pass over their heads, the 



ii2 THE SMOKED YANK. 

hangman's knots are adjusted, and the hangmen step 
down. Limber Jim seizes an ax, drives out the wedge 
that supports the drop, and five of the murderers are 
dangling in the air. 

The sixth, the same big burly Irishman that 
mugged Limber Jim, proved too heavy for his rope, 
and as it broke, he fell through the scaffold to the 
ground, stunned and bruised, but not killed. Water is 
dashed into his face and he revives and pleads for 
mercy. " Surely, yiz have not the heart to hang a man 
twice," he is heard to say. 

With awful coolness. Limber Jim lifts him up, as- 
sists him back up the steps of the scaffold, and there, 
standing on the outer beam, adjusts the noose of the 
new rope, lifts the man up off his feet and drops him to 
writhe, and struggle, and twitch, beside his writhing, 
struggling, twitching companions, until all are dead, 
dead, dead! 

The raiders raided no more. From this time on 
there was a police commissioner, or justice, and regu- 
larly organized police, and all prisoners charged with 
stealing or violating any of the prison rules were, if 
convicted, severely punished. Sometimes they were 
sentenced to do fatigue duty, such as cleaning streets, 
etc., but the usual punishment was to stretch the 
offender over a barrel, and whip him on the bare back 
with a cat-o'-nine tails, the number of lashes given him 
being in proportion to the grade of the crime. A sani- 
tary organization was also perfected to take in charge 
the general condition of the prison, see to the cleaning 
of streets, compel the deposit of urine and excre- 



THE SMOKED YANK. 123 

ment at the sink, and enforce personal cleanliness. 
The prisoners employed on the police and sanitary 
forces each received extra rations; subordinates one, 
officers two, or more, according to the grade of office. 
Whether these extra rations were taken out of the daily 
supply for the prison, thus diminishing the quantity 
issued to the common herd, or whether they were fur- 
nished in addition to the daily allowance for the camp, 
I cannot now say, though it would be interesting to 
know. One thing is certain. The fact that all service 
rendered was paid for in extra rations was of itself 
proof that the common ration was not sufficient. Other- 
wise who would have labored for an extra ration? I 
verily beHeve that a man of, or about the average size, 
and of ordinary habit as to consumption of food, could 
not have lived three months with nothing to eat besides 
the common ration. 



CHAPTER XV. 

ESCAPES — BLOOD-HOUNDS — TORTURES — DIPxGING TUNNELS— 
A BENEDICT ARNOLD — SHOOTING A CRIPPLE — THE HOS- 
PITAL — SICK-CALL — A SMALL-POX SCARE. 

Escape was almost impossible. A few succeeded 
in getting away, but in nearly every instance they were 
brought back. A pack of blood-hounds was kept, and 
every day, or oftener, a squad of cavalry accompanied 
by these dogs, would make a circle around the prison a 
half mile or more away, and the hounds were so trained 
that they would take the track and go in pursuit of any 
prisoner who had succeeded in passing the circle. Those 
captured were often terribly bitten and mangled by the 
dogs, and were subjected to tortures upon their return 
— such as hanging by the thumbs, sitting in the stocks, 
and working on the chain-gang. Hanging by the 
thumbs was to be stretched up by a rope fastened 
around each thumb until no weight remained on the 
ground, the toes being allowed to merely touch to pre- 
vent the body swinging around which would cause sick- 
ness and vomiting. The cries of the poor fellows sub- 
jected to these tortures were pitiful. They prayed and 
begged to be shot. Suppose you were to be taken to a 
wooden wall, seated on the ground, your feet made to 
project through two holes as high up as they would 
reach, and your hands through two other holes higher 
up, and your feet and hands thus placed securely fas- 
tened, you would be in the stocks. 



THE SMOKED YANK. 125 

In the chain-gang, one ankle of each man was fas- 
tened by an iron shackle and chained to an immense 
cannon-ball, perhaps a forty-pounder. When the gang 
moved from place to place to and from their work, or 
to the sink as often as any member had to go, each 
member had to drag a separate ball with one leg and 
help to drag the large one with the other. Thus 
shackled, they ate, slept, and worked. Every man who 
attempted to escape had to pass in turn through these 
three forms of torture. 

I tried many plans for escape. In fact, there 
was not ct day from the time I was made prisoner that 
I was not looking for a chance to get away, or 
working out some scheme. I helped to dig one tun- 
nel. We begun it in a hut located near the dead- 
line. Carried the dirt away in sacks at night and put 
it in the creek. The man who worked at the end 
of the tunnel lay on his belly or back and dug into 
the tough, hard red clay until he had loosened a 
small sack full. He would then pass the sack to a 
man behind him who would pass it to another, and 
so on back. When the sack reached the top of the 
ground, men lying on the ground for the purpose, 
shoved it from one to another, until it was far enough 
from the over-looking guard for a man to walk away 
with it and not be noticed. Progress was slow on 
account of the extreme hardness of the clay, but we 
toiled on night after night until we had a tunnel far out- 
side of the stockade. We were waiting for a night dark 
enough to enable us to make an opening on the outside 
and get out unseen, when our tunnel shared the fate of 



126 THE SMOKED TANK. 

most tunnels that were tried. Some poor famishing 
creature, who had seen us at work, in the hope of get- 
ting an extra ration as a reward, betrayed us, and in 
came an officer and took out all that were found in the 
tunnel, or in the tent from which it started, and put 
them through the tortures prepared for those who 
attempted to escape. Luckily, I was not at the tunnel 
at the time. 

Few tunnels were successfully completed, because 
it was hardly possible, when men were so crowded to- 
gether, to carry them on without many not engaged in 
the work finding it out, and as it was known that old 
Wirz would reward the informer, there was always some 
poor devil, either naturally mean enough, or so dis- 
tracted by want and misery, that for the sake of the 
reward he would prove traitor to his friends. 

One night there was a tremendous rain-storm, and 
the water in the creek rose so high that it washed out 
several feet of stockade at the lower side. Had this 
been generally known a general break would have been 
made, but only a few of those quartered nearby knew 
of it, and some of them escaped by swimming out in 
the flood. The rebels soon discovered the break, and 
had an armed force around the place on the outside. 

This incident suggested to some of us the possibility 
of making an organized effort to liberate the entire 
body of prisoners. As before stated, the stockade was 
made of logs, set close together, the lower ends about 
five feet in the ground. Seeing the place where the 
washout occurred, suggested the idea of tunneling to 
the stockade, and then excavating the dirt from the in- 



THE SMOKED I'ANK. 127 

side, down to, and partly under the bottom of the logs, 
and for several feet along the camp side, leaving only 
enough of the top earth to' h^ld itself up and conceal 
the work. The clay, being hard and tough nearly to 
the surface made this possible. We planned to remove 
the earth in this way from at least twelve or fifteen feet 
of the front of the stockade, and we had long poles 
prepared, intending when all was ready, to put the 
poles against the top of the stockade logs, and push 
them over. The dirt all being removed from in front 
of the logs at the bottom, this was a perfectly prac- 
tical scheme. 

While the excavating was going on we organized a 
body of picked men; had officers chosen for each com- 
pany and regiment, and a general and aids. In short, 
we organized a small army of the strongest and most 
resolute men. Our intention was to make a sudden 
rally, surprise and capture all the guards, arm a party 
of men with the captured guns, and let them make a 
forced march to Americus, only twelve miles away, and 
capture the arms and munitions of war stored in the 
arsenal there. With these we could arm and equip 
every able-bodied man in the prison. We had planned 
also to cut the telegraph wires, and to take prisoner 
every man, woman and child in the neighborhood. 
Also, to send a small body of men out, who were to 
provide themselves with horses and arms as they went, 
and force their way to Sherman's army with all possible 
speed. These men were to go in a body, if possible, 
and if not, scatter, and each man go it alone. Some, 
we thought would surely get through, for Sherman was 



128 THE SMOKED YANK. 

then at home in Georgia. The main body of the pri- 
soners, with the arms secured at Americus, were to 
march on to Macon, and liberate the officers who were 
in prison there, if possible. If the officers were liberated 
further movements were to be guided by them. If they 
were moved before our forces could surround the place 
there, we would take the town and fortify ourselves in 
it and hold every inhabitant of the place, and all we 
could find and bring in, as hostages, so that if a rebel 
army, large enough to overpower us, should come, we 
would hold them at bay until succor from Sherman 
should arrive, by putting their own people in front of 
us, and compelling our enemies to kill their own friends 
or let us alone. 

It was a well-laid scheme, and it might have suc- 
ceeded had not a Benedict Arnold sprung up at the 
proper time to betray it for reward. One fine morning 
we were awakened by the sound of cannon, and the 
whistling of grape and canister close over our heads; at 
the same time the entire force ot guards were seen 
forming on commanding portions around the prison. 
Then a company of rebels marched in and went to the 
exact spot where we had excavated; destroyed our 
works, and posted notices, stating that the plot in all its 
details was known and that the first sign of any unusual 
movement of prisoners would be the signal for firing 
the cannon that were trained on the camp and loaded 
with grape and canister. At the same time the rebels, 
to prevent another attempt of the same kind, fastened 
timbers across the logs of the stockade near the top, 
and put strong braces against the timbers, so that the 



THE SMOKED TANK. 129 

whole stockade was firmly held in place, and could not 
be pushed over from the inside, even though the dirt 
was removed from the front. 

We never knew to a certainty who the traitor was 
that betrayed this scheme, but suspicion fastened on a 
man who had but one leg, and walked with crutches. 
He was about that time, granted a parole of honor and 
permitted to pass out and into the prison as he pleased. 
One day he came inside and a lot of prisoners gathered 
around him and charged him with having been the 
traitor. He stoutly denied it, but the prisoners continu- 
ing to abuse and threaten him, he attempted to go out- 
side. There was, at the time, no officer at the gate to 
let him out, and he stepped into the space between the 
dead-line and the gate, saying to the guard above the 
gate, that he would stand there until an officer came. 
The guard told him to go back inside of the dead-line. 
The poor cripple, standing there on one foot and one 
crutch, replied, and correctly, too: "You know I have 
a parole to stay outside when I choose, and there can 
be no harm in my standing here until an officer comes 
to let me out; besides those men threaten to kill me, 
and I am afraid to stay inside the dead-line." 

The guard cocked his gun and ordered him to move 
back inside the stockade. Looking the guard full in 
the face, the man replied: " I do n't care how soon I 
die, shoot, if you like! " The words were hardly spoken, 
when the guard fired. The ball passed through the 
man's mustache and out through the neck, breaking the 
bone. Poor fellow, he felt no pain, and another rebel 
soldier was furloughed for honorable conduct. God 



I30 THE SMOKED YANK. 

save the mark! All the regulations and commands in 
Christendom could not compel a brave and honorable 
man to shoot another, a poor cripple, under such cir- 
cumstances. 

There was a hospital at Andersonville to which 
sick men were admitted, and where they ought to have 
received at least good treatment and care, for the hos- 
pital stewards were paroled prisoners, and they cer- 
tainly ought to, and probably did do the best they could 
for their suffering comrades. But the capacity of the 
hospital was limited, and only those, it was said, who 
were past curing were taken out. In fact, so few of 
those who were taken there ever came back, that it 
came to be the prevailing idea that to go^the hospital 
was to be carried alive to your grave, and but few sick 
prisoners, unless taken by force would go there. There 
was a sick-call too every morning at which time the sick 
could go into a smaller pen just outside the south gate 
where a number of rebel surgeons prescribed for the 
sick. The prevailing complaints were scurvy, diarrhoea, 
and malarial and other fevers. A little vinegar and 
sulphur was doled out to the scurvy patients; what the 
rest received, I do not know. I do know that I had 
the scurvy bad and that the stuff I got at sick-call did 
me no good, but that when I got money and bought and 
ate a few raw potatoes and some other wholesome 
food, I was quickly cured. 

There was at one time, a small-pox scare. Whether 
there were cases in the prison, I do not now remember. 
At any rate,the rebel physicians received orders to vac- 
cinate every prisoner who could not show a fresh scar. 



THE SMOKED TANK. 131 

We were formed in line, and those who could not show 
a fresh scar were vaccinated whether they wanted to be 
or not. I had been vaccinated a year before and 
escaped. Hundreds died or lost their arms from the 
effect of the vaccine. Some said it was poison, or dis- 
eased matter purposely used. I do not think so, but I 
do think that many of the prisoners who had the scurvy 
and other blood disorders, were not in fit condition to 
be vaccinated; that because of their condition the sores 
made became inflamed, gangrene got into them and 
proved fatal. I do n't think small-pox could have made 
any head- way among the half-starved prisoners; they 
were too lean. 



CHAPTER XVI. 

CONDITION OF THE PRISON IN JULY AND AUGUST — REBEL 
STATISTICS — WHY WE WERE NOT EXCHANGED — ANDER- 
SONVILLE REVENGED — THIS IS A REPUBLIC ! 

The miseries of Andersonville during the rainy 
months of May and June for those who had Httle or no 
sheher, who, drenched by the cold pelting rain, shivered 
all night, and had to endure the blistering intolerable 
heat of a tropical sun by day, were indescribable. How 
shall I convey to you an idea of the increased suffering 
in July and August, when the rains, which before 
washed the camp and carried off the filth, ceased; 
when there were more men to the square rod, when the 
rations were poorer In kind and less in quantity, when 
the creek that furnished water had diminished in 
volume and had been polluted by all manner of filth 
from the camps of the guards and the prison cook- 
houses above; when the accommodations at the sink 
were not sufficient for half of the prisoners, and, more 
than all, when hunger, and exposure, and disease, and 
scurvy, and gangrene, and vermin, and noxious vapors, 
and despondency had worked together for months and 
left their awful marks upon so many thousands of 
helpless men? The mind naturally shrinks from the 
appalling task. Abler pens than mine have been 
engaged upon the subject. Books have been written 
and many letters published describing the horrors of 
Andersonville, and yet the half has never, and never 



THE SMOKED YANK. 



133 



can, be told. I can add, as it were, but a mite, and all 
I shall seek to do will be to leave in the mind of the 
reader a picture of the place such as memory brings 
to mine. 

I give below a table copied from "McElroy's 
Andersonville," compiled from the official reports 
made by confederate authorities. It gives the average 
number of prisoners during the months of July and 
August at a little less than 32,000. My own recollec- 
tion, and it is supported by that of many others, is that 
there were between 35,000 and 40,000, and that the 
death rate was correspondingly larger. It is quite 
likely we were prone to exaggerate — just possible that 
a rebel officer would under-rate. 

The number of prisoners in the Stockade, the number of deaths each month, 
and the daily average, is given as follows: 



Months. 



March 
April . 
May. 



June 

*July . . . . . 
August . . . 
September 
October . . . 
November 



NUMBER IN 


DEATHS. 


DAILY 


STOCKADE 




av'k'ge; 


4.703 


283 


9 


9.577 


592 


19 


18,454 


711 


23 


26,367 


1,202 


40 


31,678 


1.742 


56 


31.633 


3,076 


99 


8,218 


2,790 


90 


4,208 


1.595 


51 


1.359 


485 


10 



* In July one in every eighteen died. 
In August one in every eleven died. 

The greatest number of deaths is reported to have occurred on August 23, 
when 127 died, or one man every eleven minutes. The greatest number of 
prisoners in the stockade is stated to have been August 8, when there were 33,114. 

What were all these men doing? Not reading, 
for there was no Mrs. Gardner with a humane heart 
and willing hand in that vicinity. There were no 
books there except a few testaments and bibles. In 



134 I^HE SMOKED TANK. 

my opinion the first thing that would attract the notice 
of a stranger was the thousands of men sitting in the 
sun, nearly naked, picking- away at their dlothes — 
picking off the lice. The place was literally alive with 
lice and fleas. Every man who did not get so sick and 
weak and discouraged that he had to lie down and be 
eaten up by them, made it one of his daily tasks to take 
off all his clothes and pick off the lice and fleas. To 
do this effectually, you must hold the garment in the 
warm sun so that the vermin would crawl out and be 
seen. So through all the hottest part of the day, there 
were thousands and thousands of men sitting on the 
ground wholly or partially naked picking vermin from 
their old rags or clothes, if they still had them; thous- 
ands were nearly naked when they had all their clothes 
on, these were all more or less afflicted with the scurvy. 

Scurvy swells the gums, and in time, rots them so 
that the teeth fall out; the feet swell and puff up espec- 
ially if the man is bare-footed, until they are two great 
puff-balls, resembling a pair of boxing gloves. Grasp 
one of these puffed feet with your hand, and your fin- 
gers will make dents in the flesh that will but slowly fill 
out, as in a piece of rising dough. The knee joints, too, 
are favorite points for scurvy. They were always 
swollen, like the feet, but black and blue, as though 
they had been pounded into one horrible bruise. 

Now, picture one of these half-naked, bony, filthy, 
gaunt and ghastly skeletons, his eyes sunken, his cheek 
bones protruding, his gums all swollen, his elbows and 
knees swollen, and black and blue, and his feet two 
great shapeless masses of bloated flesh, and picture him 



THE SMOKED YANK. 1^5 

sitting on the ground, as he usually was, with his chin 
betweei^is knees, and his hands clasped around them, 
and yoiWave a specimen of " Smoked Yank," thousands 
of whom could always be seen at a glance. 

I have mentioned the swamp. I shrink from the 
task, but I must take you there. The privy, or sink, as 
it was called for the prison, was, as before stated, two 
lines of poles supported by forks, one line on each side 
of the creek. As the prison filled up, and the accom- 
modations at the sink became insufficient, the swampy 
ground had to be used, until, finally, that whole piece of 
swamp ground was covered with one connected mass of 
human excrement. A moving, seething mass, for ver- 
min, worms, and bugs, kept it moving. Now, take the 
specimen of " Smoked Yank," as I have described him. 
Let him drag his swollen feet along one of the paths 
left to walk in, through that seething, squirming mass, 
and then, when he finds a place to stoop, his swollen 
knees refuse support, he falls over; is too weak to get 
up or crawl out, and there he dies. Yes, such scenes 
were there, and too common. There were hundreds 
of such cases. Would no one help him,-" you say. Cer- 
tainly, if asked, or if the dying man was noticed . But 
when men became so weak and low, they were liable to 
fall over in a swoon, and not be noticed, especially at 
night. I have helped carry men out, who had fallen 
over in that way, and did not call for help. They 
seemed to think their strength would return, and enable 
them to get up. 

I remember having my attention called one day by 
most terrible oaths, coming from a man who lay on the 



136 THE SMOKED TANK. 

side hill, just out of the swamp. I went close to him. 
He seemed to be delirious. He lay there wiy»maggots 
and worms crawling in and out of his ears aiTphis nose; 
lice all over him; flies buzzing around; maggots and 
worms between his fingers and his toes. And there he 
lay, seemingly without strength to move, and from his 
mouth there poured the most fearful stream of oaths I 
ever heard. It seemed that he blamed President Lincoln 
for not arranging an exchange, and on his head the 
burden of the oaths fall. He also cursed the Union, 
cursed the confederacy, and cursed God for permitting 
his condition. He lay in that condition, cursing and 
moaning, for several days before he died. And scenes 
like that were not uncommon; there were hundreds, 
barring the oaths. True, such deaths were not the rule, 
for usually, the sick and helpless were faithfully and 
tenderly cared for by their friends and companions, 
even until death. Those whose friends had all died, or 
who had become partly, or wholly, demented, and got 
in the habit of wandering around alone, were the ones 
that furnished such examples of extreme horrible 
misery. 

There are in the National Cemetery at Anderson- 
ville 14,000 grave-stones. 

I was in Andersonville from the 2d clay of May un- 
til about the ist of October, 1864. During that time 
about 12,000 of the prisoners died, an average of eighty 
for each day. The direct cause of this terrible death 
rate was the crowding of so many into so small a space, 
without sufficient food and shelter. A larger prison, 
and more and better food it was in the power of the 



THE SMOKED YANK. 1 37 

confederacy to furnish. As for shelter, the pine forest 
that surr^nded the prison for miles in every direction, 
would ha" furnished shelter and beds in abundance, 
had the prisoners been allowed to go under guard, or 
on parole, and help themselves. For the confederates 
who had control of rebel prisons there is absolutely no 
excuse. They were murderers, cool, calculating, merci- 
less workers of a worse instrument of torture and death 
than the bloody days of the French guillotine, and gib- 
bet, and stretching-rack, ever furnished. And those in 
authority at Washington, at the time, from Lincoln 
down are not blameless. The rebels claimed that they 
were always willing and anxious to exchange prisoners, 
but that an exchange could not be agreed on, because 
our authorities would not enter into any agreement 
that did not recognize the freed negroes, who had en- 
listed in the Union army as soldiers, and entitled to be 
exchanged, the same as white men. 

As a matter of pure principle, this was probably 
correct, but as a matter of public policy, and of justice 
and mercy to the white Union soldiers, who had enlisted 
before there were any freed negroes, it was all wrong. 
If there had been any considerable number of negro 
soldiers in the prison suffering with the others, there 
would then have been a vital principle of justice, as well 
as honor at stake, and the white prisoners themselves 
would have been the last men in the world to have 
sacrificed that principle in order to secure their own 
liberty and lives. There was not a negro Union soldier 
in Andersonville, or in any other prison for any con- 
siderable time. When they were captured they were 



138 THE SMOKED TANK. 

(Either sent back to their old masters, or put to work on 
rebel fortifications. And they were not starved, and did 
not suffer. They were property in the eyis of the 
confederates, and as such were taken care of. Their 
condition as prisoners was little worse than it had 
always been before the war. Stanton, and others 
who insisted on that point, might as well have insisted 
that every black in the South, whose liberty had been 
granted him by the Emancipation Proclamation, and 
who was detained by his old master, should be a subject 
of exchange. 

I do not know who was responsible for that fearful 
blunder, but a blunder it was, and every prisoner knew 
and felt it to be such. The men who stood out and 
refused to exchange, unless the negroes were recog- 
nized by the rebels as Union soldiers, and exchanged 
with the rest, did it too, knowingly and advisedly. 
The prison authorities once permitted the prisoners to 
send to Washington three of their number, chosen for 
that purpose, who took with them a petition to the 
President, asking that an immediate exchange be 
agreed to, on the terms proposed by the rebels, and 
setting out fully and plainly the suffering that was 
being endured, and the loss of life daily occurring. This 
petition was signed by thousands, and is probably now 
on file among the records of the war. Nothing came of 
it. There was a political principle, a cold, naked, clean- 
cut principle, at stake. There are many thousand 
grave-stones at Andersonville which would not be 
there, and many thousand widows and orphans in the 
land who would not have been widows and orphans so 



THE SMOKED YANK. I39 

soon, but for the mistaken zeal and cold-blooded prin- 
ciples of those in authority at that time. 

When^it was all over, and thousands of the poor 
emaciated creatures that survived were sent home, 
and scattered through the land, and the truth became 
known, and Harper's Weekly, and other illustrated 
papers, sent out pictures of the starved heroes, then a 
storm of indignation arose which threatened to burst 
over the heads of the misguided statesmen, who had 
refused to exchange. Then something must be done; 
Andersonville must be avenged; the storm must be 
averted. And something was done; Andersonville was 
avenged; poor old Wirz was hung. Poor old Wirz — a 
miserable, excitable little foreigner; a cross, I always 
thought, of Dutch, Italian, and French, with nothing 
Dutch about him, except his pipe and his brogue; 
nothing French except his nervous excitability; and 
nothing Italian, except his low cunning. Wirz wasn't 
a man of anywhere near the average ability of our 
private soldiers. He only wore a number six hat. He 
sometimes came into the prison, and some prisoner, to 
annoy him, would sing out: " Sour crout." Wirz 
would draw his revolver and run in the direction of the 
voice. Then some one behind would yell: " Go it, 
Dutchie." Failing to find the first man, he would run 
after the second, and so on. I have seen him charging 
around in that way, like an escaped lunatic, swearing in 
Dutch brogue, for half an hour at a time. It fitly illus- 
trates the calibre of the man. Think of such a man, 
and he only a captain in rank, being hung to avenge 
Andersonville. 



146 THE SMOKED TANK. 

Wirz had charge of the prison as a kind of provost 
marshal. He received and issued the rations, and faith- 
fully executed his orders. But as to his being in any 
manner to blame for the lack of food and shelter, and 
for the smallness of the pen, and such other evils, I don't 
believe he had anything to do with it. General Winder 
vi^as the commissary-general of rebel prisons. He 
established the prison and knew all about it. I saw 
him there with his staff, twice myself. Wirz was only 
one of his subordinates, and he was probably only a 
tool of somebody higher than himself in authority. 

I do n't suppose Wirz would have been hung had 
not specific acts of wanton cruelty to prisoners, not 
justified by the prison rules, been proved against him. 
God knows he deserved hanging bad enough, but as 
there were thousands of men against whom specific 
acts of cruelty, and of murder, during the war, could 
have been proved, who were not tried, I take it that 
Wirz was really hung to attract the attention of the 
people, and keep some of the blame from falling where 
it belonged. I read the account of his trial at the time, 
and it was my opinion then, that to hang Wirz and let 
Davis, and all others who were over him, go free, was 
a cowardly piece of business on the part of our gov- 
ernment. 

Had a few prominent men, generals and congress- 
men, been starved to death in Andersonville, Davis, 
and all others in authority would have been hung. 
Abraham Lincoln was painlessly, artistically removed. 
Booth, who performed the act, was killed, and all those 
who could in any way be connected with the planning 



THE SMOKED TANK. 141 

of it, four in all, were hung, and justly, too. Thousands 
of soldiers were removed at Andersonville, and the 
work was not painlessly nqr artistically done. Wirz, a 
half-witted foreigner, was hung. Lincoln was presi- 
dent; the Andersonville victims were all privates. This 
is a republic! 



CHAPTER XVII. 

OUTLINES OF A PICTURE. 

Fortunes have been made by exhibiting panoramic 
pictures of Gettysburg, Shiloh, Sedan, and other noted 
battle-fields; why not exhibit Andersonville? The loss 
of life was greater than at any battle of the war. More 
men were killed there than were lost in the Vicksburg 
campaign, including the many that died from sickness. 
There are as many grave-stones at Andersonville as 
are in the National Cemetery at Vicksburg, where the 
Union dead are collected from all the battle-fields and 
camp-grounds in that vicinity. A fortune awaits the 
man who shows Andersonville in any large city as those 
battle-fields have been shown. Greater than fortune, 
renown, compared to which that of Munkacsy will be 
nothing, awaits the artist who will do justice to Ander- 
sonville on canvas. 

Ambitious painter, come. Bring your brush and 
your easel. Fill in with details true to life these out- 
lines, and fortune and fame are yours! 

Two side-hills with a creek running between. That's 
right. Now, the swamp ground on the north side. 
There you have it. Now, the stockade and the dead- 
line. Guards leaning over the top of the stockade with 
a longing-to-go-home on furlough look in their eyes, as 
they eagerly watch the dead-line. Have you got the 
eyes? All right; touch them up later. The gates next, 
and the streets — that's so, if the shanties and hovels " 



THE SMOKED YANK. 143 

are put in, the streets will be left. I can't help you 
much on the shanties. Every conceivable form of shel- 
ter from sun and rain that Yankee ingenuity could con- 
trive and make out of logs, limbs, brush, poles, blankets, 
pine leaves for thatching; some had tents and sun-dried 
bricks. Give your fancy play; you will hardly invent 
one that could not have been found there. Oh, yes, 
there are photographs; didn't think of them, they will 
help you out. How close together shall you put them? 
Well, give the rebels the benefit of the doubt, if there 
is any; allow four by six feet to each man, but out of 
that you must save room to pass between the rows of 
hovels. Now, we must have on each side of these 
streets, booths and board counters on which hucksters 
have for sale goods and provisions, meats, bread, pies, 
cakes, potatoes, onions, cabbage, and fruit. To use a 
couplet from Barbara Frietchie, with a little change, 
makes them look, — 

" Fair as a garden of the Lord, 
To the eyes of the famished Union horde." 

Under tents and sheds fronting on these streets, 
tasty lunch-counters, and well equipped restaurants with 
waiters in- attendance. Tobacco and cigar stands, 
chuck-a-luck and faro boards, wheel-of-fortune, and 
gambling tents with men sitting at cards. On a corner 
near the center, the sutler's depot containing flour in 
bags, tobacco in boxes, every variety of sutler goods in 
wholesale quantities. Standing in front of all these 
boards, counters and stands, rows of able-bodied and 
well-dressed men, eating, smoking, gambling, spending 
money as freely and as gaily as at a Northern fair. 



144 THE SMOKED TANK. 

Behind them, a pack of moving skeletons in rags, 
grimy and black from smoke, feasting their eyes, ready 
to grab up and fight for any crust of bread, or bone, or 
melon rind, or stub of cigar that might be cast among 
them. Often I have seen men buy food, and to see the 
fun as they called it, cast it among this hungry, ragged 
rabble, and watch them scramble for it and often fight 
over it. Men would buy watermelon by the slice, eat the 
meat and throw the rind on the ground to see it snatched 
up and ravenously devoured. The rinds and seeds of 
melons were eagerly sought for as cures for scurvy. 

We must have here and there an oven built of clay, 
where pies and bread are baked; barber shops, tailor 
shops, jewelry shops, with lettered signs on all these. 
Thousands of naked men sitting where the sun could 
shine on their clothes, picking off lice. Thousands 
more lying on the ground and in the hovels in the 
delirium of fever, or dying from hunger and the ravages 
of scurvy; kind comrades leaning over to bathe parched 
lips and fevered brows, and whisper to them of the far 
off home, to rouse their failing courage. 

And now the sink with its crowded poles and 
crowds standing by watching, struggling for a place, the 
creek above full of men bathing and lined by others 
washing clothes, and above them, where the water came 
in under the dead-line, a crowd with buckets formed in 
lines and taking each his turn as it comes to dip his can 
or bucket or cup and get clean water. Now and then 
one reaches too far or is pushed from behind across the 
fatal line, and his brains and blood float down among 
the bathers. 



THE SMOKED YANK. 14S 

Now, put in the skeletons with poles striking at the 
skimming swallows. A hundred corpses laid in a row 
at the south gate all nearly naked, on the breast of each 
a slip of paper and a price, and sitting at the head of 
each one an owner watching either to sell his corpse or 
for his turn to carry it out. 

Near the same gate, show the poor one-legged man 
on his crutch and the fire from the gun of the guard 
above, reaching clear to his face, as it did. 

Now cover the swamp with its seething, squirming 
mass of corruption, with here and there a helpless being 
lying in it. Show a hundred more scattered around 
under the scorching sun in the last stages of scurvy, 
with flies, and maggots, and lice feeding upon them, 
and groans and curses ; — no, you cannot paint groans 
and curses. You cannot paint the din and racket and 
roar. It was not enough that thousands should die 
from disease brought on by hunger and exposure, and 
made fatal by lack of medicine and care — they must 
die with the food and vegetables that would save their 
lives, in sight. With the peddler's cry and the huck- 
ster's call, offering for sale dainty dishes, sounding all 
day in their ears. These things you cannot paint no 
more than you can the feelings they caused in the 
minds of starving men. 



CHAPTER XVIII. 

HOW I MANAGE TO LIVE — MY BUNK-MATE GOES TO THE 
HOSPITAL — I SECURE A CORNER LOT, AND GET INTO 

TRADE — Sherman's fine-tooth combs and scissors 

— removal to FLORENCE, SOUTH CAROLINA. 

I now come to what will be of more interest, at 
least to my boys. They want to know how I managed 
to live where so many died. As before stated, my 
bunk-mate, Cook, and myself, went into the Anderson- 
ville prison penniless and entirely destitute in every 
way. The clothes we had on had been cut into holes, 
to keep them from being taken when we were at Can- 
ton, Miss. We began, at first, to flank out with those 
detailed to bring in wood. In this way we secured our 
part of a shanty, made of brush and boughs. We sold 
some of the wood that we secured flanking out. A 
little bundle of "fat " pine, as much as a common stove 
stick would make, when split up fine, brought twenty- 
five cents in the prison. Such bundles of "fat" pine 
are now sold in southern cities, especially at Atlanta, 
Georgia, where I lately saw them, for one cent. They 
are used for kindling. We used them to boil our little 
cans of mush. One little blaze held under a can would 
keep it boiling, and a small bundle of the wood lasted a 
prisoner several days. You could light one end of a 
piece of good "fat" pine," stick the other end in the 
ground, and it would burn there like a candle. The 
smoke from that kind of wood is something like a mix- 



THE SMOKED TANK. 



H7 



ture of soot and oil. It made us all black. It took 
good soap and warm water to make any impression on 
it. Water could be warmed in the sun, but soap was 
scarce. With the money we got for wood, Lynn and I 
managed to piece out our rations so as to live. 

We had only been there two or three weeks, when 
we began to get cooked rations. After that there was 
no more flanking out. The coarse corn bread made 
Lynn sick. It soon became so loathsome to him that 
he could not eat it at all. In that condition a man 
could die of hunger with piles of the corn bread in his 
bed. In spite of all I could do for Lynn he grew grad- 
ually worse. I walked for hours, trying to trade his 
corn bread and strong meat for beans or rice, or some- 
thing that he could eat. Often I could not, because too 
many wanted to trade the same way. 

Davidson, our partner in the shanty, had money. 
I persuaded him to loan me ten dollars. With this 
money I started a small huckster stand. Sold salt, rice, 
beans, tobacco, and such things as I could manage with 
so little capital. Prices were so high that you could 
put in one pocket ten dollars' worth of such articles. 
With the profits from this stand I got for Lynn a little 
food which he could eat. Before I had gained enough 
to make a start of my own, the raiders became so bad 
that Davidson was afraid I would get robbed. I had to 
pay him back and quit. Then Lynn thought he would 
try the hospital. We had not yet learned that but very 
few who went there recovered. We carried him to 
sick-call. He was admitted to the hospital. Within a 
few weeks we learned that he was dead. No braver 



148 THE SMOKED YANK. 

boy or better comrade ever wore the blue. 

After Lynn went to the hospital, I put in a few 
weeks digging tunnels and trying to find a chance or 
contrive a plan for escape. During these weeks I had 
nothing to eat but my rations, I got so thin that there 
was nothing of me but skin and bone. The scurvy got 
hold of me, my gums swelled and my teeth got sore 
and loose ; my knees were swollen and my feet puffed 
and bloated. I began to realise that I must get help or 
die, and I suffered from hunger. Had I lost my grip 
then I would have been a goner. The harder the lines 
were drawn the more was I determined to live it out. 

About this time the prison was enlarged by taking 
in eight acres adjoining the old stockade on the north. 
Certain detachments were designated to occupy this 
new ground, which was covered with the boughs and 
limbs of the trees that had been cut down for the new 
stockade. My detachment was not one that was to go, 
but I managed to flank in and to secure a footing, and 
build a shanty on the main street of the new part and 
at a good place for trade. As soon as the ground in 
the new part was divided off and occupied, the old 
stockade between the old and the new parts was turned 
over to the prisoners, and a general' scramble for the 
stockade logs began. I took part in that with some 
success. 

I now had a shanty on one of the best places in the 
prison for a huckster's stand. How I managed to hold 
it I cannot now remember. I was a squatter, pure and 
simple, with no right whatever to ground, even to sleep 
on, in that part of the prison, but hold it I did. 



THE SMOKED TANK. 14c) 

Limber Jim was one of the Cahaba prisoners. He 
had got rich selling his famous " root beer " and run- 
ning a big stand. I showed him my fine location and 
asked him to start me in business. He did so ; in fact, 
he said he wanted to go out of the trade, because he 
had made enough to do him and business was getting 
dull. So he sold me, on credit, his entire stock of 
goods, amounting to $340. It was a large stock to get 
on credit, but not difficult to carry. There was a five 
gallon keg of honey, partly full, billed at $150, a bushel 
of potatoes at $75, a box of tobacco at $25, and a few 
other things. It did not take a large counter to display 
the whole stock. I kept it at night in a box, sunk in 
the earth, in my shanty, and made my bed over the 
box at night. So I began trade on what I thought, and 
what was for that place, a large scale. The money we 
used was mostly greenbacks. Confederate money was 
taken at twenty cents on the dollar. All prices were 
given in the ruling currenc3^ or greenbacks. Potatoes 
were sold at $75 per bushel, and retailed at from 
twenty-five to seventy-five cents each, according to 
size. It was said that one large potato would cure a 
case of scurvy. Biscuits were bought at $2.50 a dozen, 
and sold at twenty-five cents each, thirty cents with 
butter, and thirty-five cents with honey. Eggs retailed at 
twenty-five cents each; salt, twenty-five cents a spoonful; 
melons, ten to twenty-five cents a slice, according to the 
size of the slice; a pint cup of chicken broth, with a spoon- 
ful of rice and chicken, shown in the spoon, on top of 
the cup, forty cents ; huckleberry pies were bought at 
$1.25 each, and sold at forty cents a quarter. Whiskey 



I50 THE SMOKED YANK. 

was scarce and hard to find, but now and then a canteen 
full would be smuggled in, and it sold for twenty-five 
cents for one swallow from the canteen. The prices of 
all other goods (and you could buy almost everything 
in the provision line, if you had money,) were in the 
same proportion. These prices were outrageous, and 
the result of the monopoly enjoyed by the prison sutler, 
one Selden, formerly of Dubuque, Iowa, and a meaner 
rascal than old Wirz knew how to be. No one else was 
allowed to sell anything to the prisoners, but a consider- 
able trade was carried on by smugglers, both prisoners 
and guards. In order to do anything in the smuggling 
line, which was more profitable than legitimate trade, I 
secured a prisoner, named James Donahue, who be- 
longed to an Indiana regiment, as a partner. He could 
neither read nor write, but was an expert in the smug- 
gling line, and quick and sharp in any kind of trade. 
Escape was my hobby, and I spent most of my profits 
in various tunnels and other projects for escape, but 
never succeeded in getting out, though I was several 
times very near success. 

When Sherman's army approached Atlanta, the 
rebels found that a raid would be made to liberate us, 
and began preparations for our removal. Stoneman's 
raid was designed for our release, but did not succeed. 
On the contrary, a large number of his men were cap- 
tured, and brought to Andersonville as prisoners. 

Instead of rendering any assistance to us, the badly 
managed raid of Stoneman resulted in adding several 
thousand to the already densely packed prison, making 
our condition worse than before. This was not Sher- 



THE SMOKED TANK. i^t 

man's fault. The plan was a good one, and did credit 
both to his head and to his heart. Had others in 
authority manifested as much interest in, and consid- 
eration for the prisoners, as Sherman did, some ar- 
rang-ement would have been made for their relief. 
What a pity that Sheridan, or Kilpatrick, or some man 
capable of conducting such a campaign, was not chosen 
for the work. No other opportunity for a feat-of-arms 
so brilliant as the release of the Andersonville prisoners 
would have been, was furnished by the war. 

I always have to laugh when I think of Sherman's 
scheme for the release of the prisoners. On page 143, 
second volume of his Memoirs, he says : " All this time 
Hood and I were carrying on the foregoing correspond- 
ence relating to the exchange of prisoners, the removal 
of the people from Atlanta, and the relief of our prison- 
ers-of-war at Andersonville. Notwithstanding the sev- 
erity of their imprisonment, some of these men escaped 
from Andersonville and got to me at Atlanta. They 
described their sad condition. More than 25,000 pris- 
oners confined in a stockade designed for only 10,000 ; 
debarred the privilege of gathering wood out of which 
to make huts ; deprived of sufficient healthy food ; and 
the little stream that ran through their prison pen poi- 
soned and polluted by the offal from their cooking and 
butchering houses above. On the 22d of September I 
wrote to General Hood describing the condition of our 
men at Andersonville, purposely refraining from casting 
odium on him or his associates, for the treatment of 
these men, but asking his consent for me to procure 
from our generous friends at the North the articles of 



i52 THE SMOKED TANK. 

clothing and comfort which they wanted, viz., under- 
clothing, soap, combs, scissors, etc., all needed to keep 
them in health, and to send these stores with a train, 
and an officer to issue them. General Hood, on the 
24th, promptly consented, and I telegraphed to my 
friend, Mr. James E. Yeatman, vice-president of the 
Sanitary Commission at St. Louis, to send us all the un- 
derclothing and soap he could spare, specifying 1,200 
fine-tooth combs and 400 pairs of shears to cut hair. 
These articles indicate the plague that most afflicted 
our prisoners at Andersonville. 

" Mr. Yeatman promptly responded to my request, 
expressed the articles, but they did not reach Anderson- 
ville in time, for the prisoners were soon after removed. 
These supplies did, however, finally overtake them at 
Jacksonville, Florida, just before the war closed." 

Soap, fine-tooth combs, scissors and underclothes. 
What an idea he must have had of our "sad condition," 
when he thought those articles indicated the plague that 
most afflicted us. 

Uncle Billy, your judgment of the fighting, march- 
ing, foraging capacity of a Yankee soldier was never at 
fault, but when you proposed to relieve 30,000 starving 
Yankees with " 1,200 fine-tooth combs and 400 pairs of 
shears," you were away off. You made no allowance 
whatever for Yankee ingenuity. The soap would have 
been handy, the underclothes would have made fine 
summer suits, but we were not particular about our ap- 
pearance. A starving man will eat before making his 
toilet. There were plenty of fine-tooth combs and 
enough shears. If there hadn't been how long would it 



The smoked tank. 153 

have taken Yankees to have made them ? We were 
not troubled much with the kind that you can catch 
with a fine-tooth comb, or cut off with scissors. It was 
not the fashion there to give away things to eat, but 
combs and scissors were freely lent. Hard-tack, sow- 
belly, rice and beans. Uncle Billy, those, and vegetables 
for scurvy, would have cured us all. Had you been there 
and seen men make counterfeit greenbacks,make jewelry 
and mend watches, to say nothing about combs, wooden 
buckets, and the like, you would laugh yourself at the idea 
of relieving them with fine-tooth combs andscissors. 

One evening, just after dark, I sold something to a 
prisoner, and gave him change for a $10 greenback. 
In broad daylight that greenback wouldn't pass, but it 
was fine work to be done in such a place. I took in 
trade an open-face silver watch. The crystal got broken. 
I took it to a watchmaker's shop. He couldn't make a 
crystal, but he took a silver half-dollar, and with it con- 
verted my watch into a hunter case. All such trades 
were represented there. 

When arrangements for our removal were per- 
fected, the old story of a general exchange was again 
circulated, and was again believed because so much de- 
sired. Donahue, my partner, bought a chance to go 
with the first lot that were taken out; the man who sold 
the chance staying in Donahue's place. I think the first 
lot were taken to Savannah and exchanged. When the 
time came for the detachment to which I belonged to 
go, I sold out my little stock of goods and concealed in 
my clothes about seventy dollars in greenbacks that I 
had accumulated. 



154 ^^^ SMOKED YANK. 

We were marched out by detachments. There 
were so many too weak to walk or so lame from scurvy, 
that every well man had to assist one or two of the sick 
or lame to the depot about a mile away. We were 
halted in front of Wirz's quarters to answer roll-call 
and be counted. Wirz had been sick, but he came out 
leaning on a cane, and took occasion to do some of his 
Dutch swearing. He called us damned Yankee thieves 
and robbers; said we didn't look so fine as when we 
came there: was sorry there were so many of us able to 
go, and that if he had had his way there wouldn't have 
been a damn man of us alive. I can't remember his 
words, but that is the substance of his brutal leave- 
taking. 

We were loaded into common cattle-cars and fas- 
tened in. Guards with guns rode on the top of each 
car. At Milledgeville we were unloaded for awhile, 
and when we were again started from there toward 
Charleston, we began to feel sure that our prison days 
were about over. Our hopes revived. We were happy; 
men who had not smiled for months were brim-full of 
joy and glee. They forgot hunger, and swollen joints, 
and fleshless limbs, and useless feet, and talked of bliss- 
ful hours to come; of meetings soon to be with wives 
and children, with fathers, mothers, brothers and sisters, 
'and many of " another not a sister." And then the talk 
would run on things they would get to eat; imaginary 
tables would be spread, upon which each would place 
his favorite dish, and all this while crowded together in 
cattle cars so closely that we had to take turns in lying 
down. There were no regrets, no mention of past suf- 



THE SMOKED TANK. 155 

fering. Hope, bright angel of the morning, ruled in 
each breast, and to a bright and joyous future each 
weary eye was turned. Sad, sad, was the sequel. 

We reached Charleston, heard the sound of Union 
guns, even caught a glimpse of the dear old flag. What 
rejoicing ! How we shouted ! But presently our train 
moved on. Our hopes began to sink. When the dis- 
mal tidings came that we were on our way to Florence, 
to another stockade, utter woe and despair took posses- 
sion where a joyful hope had been. 



CHAPTER XIX. 

I GO FOR WATER AND ESCAPE A FAITHFUL PEOPLE — A 

NOVEL CHARACTER — A COMICAL HERO. 

At Florence, S. C, we were unloaded and placed 
on some vacant ground near the depot and a chain of 
guards thrown around us. It was a little before sun- 
down. I had carried with me a bundle containing a 
pair of clean white pants, made of meal bags, and a 
white shirt. Obtaining some water and soap, I washed 
myself, put on the clean pants and shirts, and made 
myself look as little like a Yankee prisoner as I possibly 
could. I was planning to bribe a guard and get away, 
or, if that failed, to knock one over in the dark and run. 
I had determined to make at least an effort to escape 
before entering another stockade. I had some sweet 
potatoes that I had bought from a negro at a station on 
the way, and these I wanted to cook, so as to leave on 
a full stomach. 

There was a sergeant and squad of guards detailed 
to guard the prisoners, from the ground where we were 
kept to the well where water was obtained. I picked 
up a bucket to go for water, and got to the place where 
an officer was stationed to count out and in those who 
went for water. A little after a gang had passed out, I 
spoke politely to the officer and told him I wanted some 
water and would at once overtake the party. They 
were but thirty or forty steps away, and he said : " Step 
out quick then, and catch up." I did so in good faith, 



THE SMOKED YANK. 157 

and he made another mark on his tally-sheet. I quickly 
overtook the party, noticing that the officer had turned 
around as soon as he saw me well up with them, and 
also that neither the sergeant nor any of the guards 
had observed my approach. So, instead of falling in 
behind the column of prisoners, I put on a careless air 
and walked a little faster, passing both the prisoners 
and the guards who marched behind them, and walked 
along in front of the whole party. It occurred to me 
that the guards might not take me for a Yankee on ac- 
count of my clothes, and that I could test that point 
without being chargeable with an attempt to escape. 
The orders were to shoot any prisoner caught in the act 
of attempting to escape, and I did not want to run the 
risk of being shot. 

The well that we were going to was in the yard 
behind the house. I got to it first, filled my bucket 
and sat down on the back porch of the house, beside 
the owner of the premises, and commenced talking with 
him about the Yankee prisoners, conveying the idea 
that I was not one of them. 

The prisoners spent some time in washing them- 
selves before they filled their pails to return. I was in 
an agony of suspense. I did not know whether the ser- 
geant in charge took me for a prisoner or not, and I 
dared not undertake to go away until I found out, so 
I put on as much unconcern as I could, and waited. 
Finally the order came, " Fall in, Yanks, fall in." The 
rest formed in line. I paid no attention, but kept on 
talking to the proprietor. I saw the sergeant looking 
sharply at me; then he counted his prisoners, and satis- 



158 THE SMOKED 7'ANK. 

fied with the count that I was not one, he marched them 
away. I was not with the party when he counted them 
out. My new-made acquaintance was now in the way. 
I had to do something with my pail of water or his sus- 
picions would be aroused. There was no time to spare, 
for it was only two hundred yards to where the count- 
ing-in would be done by the officer that let me out and 
I would be missed; fortunately the man stepped into 
the house. I set my pail of water behind the well-curb, 
scaled the high board fence at the back of the yard and 
walked off. I dared not run for that would attract the 
attention of people who were in sight. I got to the 
main street where many people were moving back and 
forth and talking about the Yanks, and walked away as 
fast as I could. Looking back I saw bayonets glisten- 
ing in the rays of the setting sun all around that well 
and yard. I gained the outskirts of the town without 
being noticed; got into a patch of woods and then ran 
— ran until I felt safe from immediate pursuit, and then 
walked on through the woods. 

About ten o'clock that night I ran across a party of 
negroes hunting possum; I told them who I was, and 
asked them about the country, the roads, and the pros- 
pects of my getting to Union lines. They advised me 
to make for the coast, and when there, to signal some 
blockading vessel. They said such vessels patrolled the 
coast, to prevent the rebels making salt. I resolved to 
follow their advice. They told me to cross the Pedee 
river at a certain ferry, run by a negro whom they said 
I could trust. I found the ferry, and in the morning, 
when the negro came out, made myself known to him. 



THE SMOKED TANK. 15Q 

He said it was not safe to travel by day, and took me 
to a hiding place in the woods, to stay until night, and 
furnished me with plenty to eat. /That night, when he 
came after me, he brought along another escaped pris- 
oner, a young fellow whose name I have forgotten; he 
seemed to be all right, and we agreed to stay together. 
The ferry-man thought our best way was to get a boat, 
and go down the river to the coast. As there was no 
moon, he thought we could paddle down by night, with- 
out being seen, and hide in the swamps during the day. 
He told us where we could find a dug-out, and loaned 
us an iron bar with which to break the lock. We were 
soon in the dug-out paddling down the Pedee. When 
morning came I wanted to hide in the woods, but my 
companion wanjted to land at a plantation and get some 
provisions. We had enough food provided by the ferry- 
man for that day, and I objected to running any unnec- 
essary risks, but he insisted on landing, so I paddled the 
canoe to the east bank of the river, and stepped out, 
telling him to go his way, and I would go mine. I never 
saw him again. 

jT lay in the brush until toward night, and then 
started to find some road or plantation before dark, 
where I could find a negro to give me directions. 
There was a wide swamp on that side of the river, and 
not being aware of it, I was soon in it. It was a dismal 
enough place, full of owls, and bats, and snakes. I 
traveled several hours in this swamp, and was begin- 
ning to think myself in a fix, when I heard a cow-bell, 
and steering for that, found dry ground. I came to a 
plantation that night, skulked around until I saw a 



i6o THE SMOKED YANK. 

negro alone, to whom I told my story. He said that 
every white man, woman and child in the^county, was 
looking for escaped prisoners; that all the bridges and 
cause-ways across swamps were guarded at night, and 
roads patrolled. The only way I could get through 
was to secrete myself during the day and travel with a 
negro guide at night, who would know how to avoid 
roads and bridges. This negro guided me about ten 
miles that night, and left me with one of his friends. 
The next day was Sunday, and quite a number of ne- 
groes visited me, where I was hid in the woods; they 
brought food to give me, and treated me very kindly. 
I was the first Union soldier, and probably the first 
Union man any of them had ever seen. The questions 
they asked were both numerous and novel. I was sur- 
prised at their intelligence in some directions, and 
amused at their ignorance in others. Their ideas of 
government, and of personal and property rights, were 
all drawn from the Bible. That was their sole authority, 
and they had that down fine. Even those who could 
not read, only now and then one could, would quote 
passage after passage from the Bible relating to them- 
selves, and give the verse and chapter with surprising 
accuracy. Deliverance from slavery was not a surprise 
to them; they had been hoping and praying for it for 
years, with perfect faith that their prayers would be 
answered. It seemed that they had always expected it 
to come from some outside source, and had never en- 
tertained a thought of taking a part themselves in their 
deliverance. They were and are a peculiarly faithful 
and patient people. Should they ever become thor- 



THE SMOKED TANK, i6i 

oughly aroused and united in a movement to throw off 
the white man's yoke, that still oppresses and galls 
them, I believe that the fortitude, endurance and hero- 
ism they will display will surprise the world. 

The leader of the company that staid in the woods 
with me nearly all that day, was a preacher. Before 
he left, seeing that I had no coat, he asked me if I did 
not need one, and soon after they went away one of 
them came back bringing me quite a comfortable over- 
coat. That night I was guided to a plantation on a 
public road running from Florence to a place on the 
coast where there were salt works. There a plan was 
formed of secreting me in a wagon that made weekly 
trips to the coast, driven by a negro. I waited two days 
for the wagon, concealed in the daytime in a fodder 
house, under the bundles of corn fodder. When the 
negro came along with his wagon he had two passen- 
gers, a white woman and her little girl. Of course I 
could not ride in such company. 

That night I was piloted again through woods and 
swamps and left at the house of a negro preacher. He 
lived alone, and when he went to work locked his door 
with a padlock on the outside, leaving me on the inside. 
He procured for me some paper, pen and ink, and I 
wrote myself a rebel furlough, thinking it might come 
handy should I be picked up by some of the patrols. I 
represented myself in the furlough as belonging to the 
Georgia regiment that had guarded us from Anderson- 
ville to Florence, and I signed the name of a captain 
whom I happened to know . That night there was no one 
ready to guide me further, and I was taken to a stack of 



t62 the smoked yank. 

straw out in a field, into w hich I crawled to spend the 
night. Along in the night someone came and crawled 
into the straw quite close to me. I thought it must be 
a negro, but said nothing. About daylight I heard my 
unknown bed-fellow crawling out, and concluded to 
crawl out too, and see who he was. We were both 
badly scared when we stood up and faced each other. 
He was a rebel soldier in full uniform. He had de- 
serted and was hiding in the neighborhood of his home, 
making occasional visits by stealth to his family. I 
bought this man's jacket, which had South Carolina 
buttons, for $5 in greenbacks. 

That day I was secreted in the woods, and when 
my dinner was brought to me at noon, a big negro with 
a club and a gun, accompanied the bearer. He was a 
run-away slave. Had been in the woods and swamps 
for seven years. Had often been pursued but never 
captured. Said that white men could not take him alive. 
He roamed about from place to place, occasionally vis- 
iting his wife and children. He was known to most of 
the negroes in the regions he frequented, and by them 
had never been betrayed. He killed hogs and cattle, 
and traded the meat to other negroes for clothing and 
bread. He was a veritable wild man of the woods, and 
the story of his adventures and escapes from blood- 
hounds entertained and thrilled me for hours. 

That night I secured a guide and moved on. Was 
left at another plantation, where I staid two days to let 
an old uncle mend my shoes. 

Provided with another faithful guide, I passed 
through a wide swamp, crossing the deep creeks on a 



THE SMOKED YANK. 163 

foot-path of logs known only to negroes. Over the 
swamp I was directed to a plantation some miles away, 
where I was to wake up another negro in a certain one 
of the negro houses that was described. It was a bright 
moonlight night, and I did not feel safe on a public 
road, so I stopped at the first plantation I came to, 
thinking it better to trust the first negro I could find 
than to go alone. 

I knocked at what I supposed was a negro quarter. 
At first no answer. I rapped louder, and a voice called 
out: " Who is there ?" It was unquestionably a white 
man's voice. I replied: "I'm a stranger, have lost my 
way and want to stay all night." And then I ran. Was 
out of sight by the time he had slipped on his pants and 
opened the door. I ran on until I came to the forks 
of two roads. Here there was a solitary log house. I 
crept up to it, and peering through a crack, saw two 
negroes sitting in front of the fireplace. They were 
talking, and, thinking I could form an opinion from 
their talk as to whether they would do for me to trust, 
I watched them and listened. Presently I heard the 
galloping of a horse up the road I came, and had just 
time to hide in the shadow of some scrub oaks near by, 
when a white man came up at full gallop, revolver in 
hand. He rapped at the door and brought the negroes 
out, saying: " Bring out that white rascal you have got 
hid in there." They had seen no white man and told 
him to come in and search, which he did. 

He then galloped away, taking the same road I 
wanted to follow. I did not like the appearance of the 
two negroes, and so ran on after my pursuer. He 



1 64 THE SMOKED YANK. 

Stopped at every plantation, and made inquiries, and I 
usually came up about the time he would be leaving. 
I followed him in this way untiH came to the plantation 
that I had been directed to, and counting off so many 
houses from the white folks' house, and whispering his 
name at a crack between the logs, attracted the atten- 
tion of the negro that I was after. He had been awa- 
kened by the noise made by the man on the horse. He 
was wonderfully tickled at the idea of my following the 
man who was pursuing me. (This negro advised me to 
stay with him until the negro from Florence, with the 
wagon, came along again. Said he would be there on 
the next night, on his way to the coast, and would stay 
all night with him. I stayed concealed in the woods. 
The negro with the wagon was on time, and early the 
following morning I was carefully stored away in the 
wagon underneath the fodder carried to feed the mules. 
It was a covered wagon, and full of the fodder of that 
country, which is the leaves stripped from corn, cured 
and tied in bundles. The wagon was drawn by three 
mules. The driver rode on the nigh wheel mule, and 
drove the leader with a jerk-line. 

I have seen many attempts to imitate the negro, 
but here was an original and comic genius that beat any 
negro minstrel I have ever seen. He had a banjo, a 
fiddle and a pair of bones. He wore a fireman's hat, 
made of leather and iron, and was otherwise rigged out 
in clownish fashion. At nearly every house we passed 
he had something to deliver. Packages of good^, pur- 
chased at Florence, letters and messages. His wagon 
seemed to be a kind of weekly express for all the coun- 




o 



Ota 



^H 



5 ' 

kH O 

^ o 
<^ 

Q 
H 

w 
o 
p 

O 
H 

O 



THE SMOKED TANK. 165 

try through which he passed. Every one knew him, 
and every one bantered and joked with him. As he 
drove along the road he whistled, and sang, and played 
on his several instruments in turn. 

/At Conwayborough, a village through which we 
passed, there was a bridge and some rebel soldiers on 
guard. The negro bantered and joked with them also, 
and when they asked him if he had any Yanks in his 
wagon, he replied, " Go way dah — you home guards — 
you 'uns thought dah was Yanks in dis here wagon, I 
could jus dance juba on you 'uns coat tails as dey'd 
stick out behind." The rebels thought best to make 
some search, and they poked the fodder around with the 
muzzles of their guns. As for me, I was so badly scared 
that I thought they must surely hear the rattle of the 
fodder caused by the beating of my heart. They dis- 
covered nothing, and we moved on.l 

When there were no houses ia sight I crawled out 
of my hole in the fodder, and watched the road behind 
us, the driver watching in front. And thus with music 
and song, gibes and jokes, and juba danced on the 
saddle of the nigh mule, we journeyed to the sea. 

About 10 o'clock that night we began to hear the 
sound of the breakers. I had never seen the sea, and sup- 
posed that when it was calm there were no waves. This 
was a beautiful, calm, moonlight night, and to hear the 
roar of breakers two miles away was a revelation to me. 
I had thought all along that I would take a great bath 
when I came to the sea, and when we got there I undressed 
and walked out on the sandy beach, but those breakers 
I had not counted on, and I dared not venture in. 



CHAPTER XX. 

'* HELL HATH NO FURY LIKE A WOMAN SCORNED" — A BADLY 
SCARED NEGRO — CAPTURED BY A FOURTEEN-YEAR-OLD 
BOY — IN A felon's CELL. 

My comical guide made me known to some of the 
darkies at the salt works. They kept me concealed 
and took care of me several days, but thought there 
was not much prospect of my getting away in a block- 
ade vessel; said the blockaders had ceased to visit that 
part of the coast. I remained there until I got tired of 
waiting and watching, and then, after consulting with 
the best posted of the negroes, concluded to work my 
way into Wilmington, N. C, and if possible enlist on a 
blockade runner. These darkies had heard that it was 
so hard to get men to go on blockade runners that the 
officers would take whoever applied, without asking 
questions. 

My idea was that if I could get on one of these ves- 
sels, and did not get captured by my friends, I could 
claim protection from an American Consul at some 
neutral port, where the vessel would land. I was near 
the line between North and South Carolina, and one 
night I started up the coast toward Wilmington. About 
12 o'clock I came to a stream or inlet where there was «l 
a ferry. There was a plantation on the side of the 
stream that I was on, and quite a number of negro 
houses. I entered one of these, the door of which was 
open, and after pulling and shaking him for some time. 



THE SMOKED YANK. 167 

awakened a negro who lay on the floor, with his feet to 
the fireplace, in which there was a fire burning. He 
turned out to be a pure African, born in Africa, and I 
could not get much out of him; in fact, could not under- 
stand much of his jargon. While trying to talk with 
this man, two other negroes came in who had been out 
hunting. From them I learned that the plantation be- 
longed to Captain ; that he was suspected of being 

a Union man; that he had sold all his slaves before the 
war began, and that he was originally from the state of 
Maine ; had been captain of a vessel engaged in ship- 
ping; owned the plantation and was working it with 
hired negroes; also that there was a small fort just 
across the inlet or stream, and some rebel soldiers there. 
Pondering these things, it occurred to me that it 
would do to trust this white man. So I went to his 
house and rapped on his door. At first I" got no answer. 
Rapping harder, some one called out, "Who's there ?" 

I replied, " I am a stranger, and want to see Mr. ." 

I listened with my ear at 'the door, heard him get up 
and dress, and thought I heard him getting down a gun. 
Anyway, my courage failed me as I thought of the fix 
I would be in if he should open the door gun in hand. 
In that case it would be all right if he turned out to be 
a Union man, and all wrong otherwise. And just then 
it occurred to me that a Union man would not have 
been permitted to remain alive in that country, and 
that I didn't want to see a man that was so long getting 
ready to open his door. When he did open it I was not 
there, I had changed my mind and was making double- 
quick time for a bridge that the darkies said crossed 



i68 THE SMOKED YANK. 

the stream some miles up from that place. Their direc- 
tion was to take the main road until I came to a road 
turning off to the right. I did so, and after following 
the road that turned off to the right two or three miles, 
it gave out and I found it only to be a wood road. Re- 
tracing my steps, I got into the main road and followed 
it to where a second road turned off to the right; fol- 
lowed that two or three miles with the same success as 
before, and when I got back to the main road again it 
was broad daylight, and I was still in sight of that plan- 
tation. In fact, was on a part of it, and looking through 
the cracks of a log house, saw two negro women sleep- 
ing on the floor, and one up, cooking breakfast. 

Being tired and hungry, I asked the woman to let 
me in. She objected at first, but when I told her I was 
a Union soldier escaped from prison, she unlocked the 
door and let me in. I told her I had been traveling all 
night and would like something to eat. I wish I could 
repeat verbatim all that woman said. Her home was 
in Georgia, where she had a family of children from 
whom she had been taken and sent as a hired hand to 
work on this plantation. Her whole soul was up in 
arms against the whole white race. She give me some- 
thing to eat! No; if one mouthful of her bread would 
keep every white man on earth from starving, she 
wouldn't give it. I asked her why she had let me in, 
and tried to explain that I was a Union soldier, and 
that Union soldiers were friends of the slaves. No use. 
She had let me in because she wanted a chance to 
speak her mind to a white man, whom she had no cause 
to fear; and she improved the opportunity by cursing 



THE SMOKED TANK. 169 

and emptying the vials of her wrath on me as a substi- 
tute for the whole white race. Hers was the most cut- 
ting abuse I ever heard from human tongue, and withal, 
she displayed facility in the use of words and a kind of 
rude eloquence. I offered to pay her for something to 
eat. She would rather turn a white man from her door 
hungry than to have all the money on earth. I asked 
her if she was going to tell her master that I had been 
there? No, she wouldn't do anything to please her 
master, and receiving this assurance I was glad to be 
turned hungry from her door. She was the only one of 
the race I ever applied to in vain for assistance. 

I had until this avoided traveling alone by day, but 
now saw no way of finding and crossing the bridge ex- 
cept by daylight. After resting and sleeping awhile in 
the woods, I started again to find the bridge. Where 
there was timber on both sides of the road, I followed 
the road walking in the edge of the woods, watching 
warily, and ready to hide behind trees should I meet or 
see anyone. About noon I met a negro boy and asked 
him about roads, plantations, negroes, and such things 
as I wanted to know, without telling him who I was. I 
made a blunder in saying to him as he rode away, not 
to tell any white man that he had seen me. Now, it 
happened that I was passing through that neighbor- 
hood, or trying to pass through, on the very day set by 
the planters for a grand hunt with dogs and guns, after 
a lot of rebel deserters who infested the region, con- 
cealing themselves in swamps by day, and preying on 
pig-pens, hen-roosts and whatever else they could steal 
by night. The negroes were not more friendly to this 



170 THE SMOK&D TANK. 

class of marauders than the whites were. The negro 
boy I talked with took me for one of these deserters, 
and immediately rode to where his master and other 
white men had assembled, and put them on my track. 

Near where I met the boy, there was a log house in 
the middle of a corn field. The boy told me it was an 
old negro's quarters. When the boy was out of sight I 
went into a school house near the road on my right, and 
there left my overcoat and a little bundle, in which I 
had some fat bacon and some raw sweet potatoes, con- 
cealed under a desk. I then crossed the road and went 
to this negro quarter. The old negro had seen me meet 
the boy, and he was much alarmed when I told him my 
story. He feared the boy would report me. He gave 
me some raw fish and bread and a little fire between 
two pieces of bark, and directed me to a place in the 
swamp, across the field, where I could, he thought, build 
a small fire and not be found unless the dogs should 
take my track, in which case, he said, I should be sure 
to be caught whether I stopped or not. He did not 
think the dogs would follow a white man's track. 

I built a small fire and roasted my fish, which were 
from the salt water, — mullets, I think, and the finest fish 
I ever tasted. Dinner over, I took a nap, and when I 
awoke started back to the negro hut, but not following 
the path by which I had come. The old man saw me 
coming and met me in the corn. He was the most com- 
plete picture of fright that you can possibly imagine. 
His hair literally stood straight up — woolly hair at that. 
His teeth chattered and his black face seemed to be an 
ash color. He was so much agitated that at first I 



THE SMOKED YANK. 171 

could not understand his rapidly uttered jargon. Fin- 
ally he made me understand that the white men were 
after me, had been to his house, and were on my track 
into the woods. He wanted me to go with him and 
give myself up. " Oh, Massa," he said, " if da' do n't 
ketch you, da' skin dis nigga alive. Da' done tie dis 
nigga up an whip him to def." I quieted his fears as 
much as I could, and hastened across the corn field to 
the school house. My coat and bundle were gone. I 
surmised that the dogs not being trained for that pur- 
pose, would not track a white man, and that it would be 
better to hide than to travel and take chances of being 
seen. 

Not far off there was an abandoned field with deep 
gullies washed through, and in the gullies and on their 
sides a thick matting of blackberry briers, vines and 
brush. I made my way to this field, taking care to leave 
no tracks that could be seen, and hid in one of the ra- 
vines. There I could plainly hear the tooting of horns 
and the sound of voices calling to the hounds. The 
negro was right; the hounds were not trained for white 
man's track. 

I started again about midnight, moving stealthily 
through woods and fields on a line with the road. In 
about two hours I reached the river again that I wanted 
to cross. I knew the bridge was near, but I feared a 
guard might be there, and I made a bundle o^ my 
clothes, intending to tie them on top of my head and 
swim across. As I sat on the bank in the moonlight 
wondering if I could swim well enough to reach the 
other shore, I saw something disturb the water — a large 



T72 THE SMOKED TANK. 

fish or an alligator. All thought of getting into that 
water vanished. I put on my clothes and crept cauti- 
ously from tree to tree, along the bank, until I could 
see the bridge. I crawled up close to it and watched 
and listened. I lay there half an hour or more. I could 
neither hear nor see anything to indicate that a guard 
was there. Thinking that if there should be a guard 
there, it would be better for me to be stopped walking 
carelessly along than to be caught trying to slip over, 
especially as I meant to play the furlough dodge if I 
should be taken, I slipped back into the woods, stepped 
into the road some distance from the bridge, and came 
whistling along to the bridge. Was half way over and 
breathing freer, when a boy stepped from behind a 
large tree in front of me, and called out, " Halt!" He 
was but twenty rods away, and I could see plainly that 
he was a mere boy, but he held a dangerous weapon, a 
double-barreled shot-gun. I could see that both barrels 
were cocked, and that boy or no boy, he meant busi- 
ness. " Well, my boy," I said, " what do you want ?" 
" About, face!" " You must be a raw recruit," I said. 
"You ought to say, ' Who goes there?' if I say, 'Friend!' 
then you should say, ' Advance and give the counter- 
sign!' " " You about face," said he, " or I'll shoot!" and 
he leveled his gun. There was no other way to do, and I 
turned around. '' Forward, march!" was his next com- 
mand. I tried to talk to him and get him to look at my 
furlough, but he would have none of it, and answered 
nothing, except " Forward, march !" and " Go right 
along, or I'll shoot!" And forward, march, it was; cap- 
tured by a fourteen-year-old boy that I could have 




CAPTURED BY A FOURTEEN-YEAR-OLD BOY. 



THE SMOKED YANK. I'ji 

dropped over the bridge with one hand, could I have pre- 
vailed on him to come within my reach. We marched 
back about half a mile, the boy keeping well behind 
with cocked gun, when we met his brother-in-law, on 
horseback, coming to relieve him. The brother-in-law 
was a lieutenant of artillery, and at home on a furlough. 
They marched me back to their father's house which 
was near where I had been hunted the day before. On 
the way, I learned that they took me for a deserter, and 
that when the crowd gathered the next day I was liable 
to be hung, or whipped severely at the best, and sent to 
the front. Under these circumstances I thought it best 
to show my colors, so I told them I was a prisoner of 
war trying to escape. When we got into the house I 
was given a seat near the fire-place and managed to slip 
my furlough into the fire without being seen. 

It was hard to make these people believe that I was 
a Union soldier. They said I talked and looked like a 
Southerner. I told them it was easy enough for me to 
talk and act like a Southern man, because my parents 
were Kentuckians, and both my grandfathers, Virgin- 
ians, and that when I tried to play the rebel soldier, as 
I was trying until they talked about ropes and whips, 
all I had to do was to fall back on my mother tongue. 

The owner of this place was an ideal Southern man, 
manners, chivalry and all. He scouted the idea of mis- 
treating a prisoner. " This young man," said he, " was 
a gentleman at home, and in my house he shall be 
treated as a guest." There were in the family two 
daughters, two sons, and the son-in-law, who was at 
horne on a furlough. 



174 TH^ SMOKED TANK. 

When breakfast time came, these young people 
seemed to object to eating at the same table with a 
Yankee soldier. " Then turn him loose," said the old 
man. " No white man whose ancestors are from Ken- 
tucky and Virginia shall be forced to sit here while we 
eat, and not be offered a seat at the table." I tried to 
make some excuse, not caring to sit at a table where 
there were those who objected, but the old gentleman 
would take no excuses. " If you were my boy," he said, 
' you would be in the rebel army. You live in the 
North, and you would be a traitor to your home if you 
were not on the Union side." 

After breakfast my boy captor was sent on a horse 
to the fort at the mouth of the river, and brought back 
two soldiers who took me to the fort. The next day 
was Sunday, and hundreds of people, both white and 
black, came to take their first look at a Yankee soldier, 
I was kept there several days, and then sent along with 
several guards and some loaded wagons to Whiteville, 
a place on a railroad between Florence and Wil- 
mington. 

We arrived at this place on Saturday morning after 
the train to Florence had passed, and I had to remain 
until Monday, and was turned over to the provost mar- 
shal. This gentleman treated me very kindly, walked 
around the town with me for awhile, and took me to 
his house to tea. 

When night came, however, he said he would have 
to lock me up in the county jail. I objected to this, and 
tried hard to persuade him to either put a guard over me, 
or take my parole of honor and keep me at his house. 



THE SMOKED TANK. 175 

He would not yield, and into the jail, behind the bars 
of a common felon's cell, I had to go. It had been 
humiliating to be captured by a fourteen-year-old boy; 
to be locked in a felon's cell, although charged with no 
crime, broke me all up; I felt that it was a disgrace; I 
lay down on the straw mattress in the cell and cried 
like a child. 

The next morning when a jailor came in with food 
for the prisoners, he laid on a mantel, separated by the 
corridor from my cell, a fine butcher knife. It was 
about six feet from the bars of my cage. It would, I 
thought, be a fine prize if I could get it and take it with 
me back to prison. The only articles in my cell were 
the mattress and the southern substitute for a broom. 
This was made of a bunch of some kind of long grass, 
the butts wound with a cord, forming the handle, the 
tops forming the broom. Grasping this by the tops of 
the straws, I could reach through the bars and touch 
the knife. Working the knife around until the point 
was towards me, and the end of the handle against the 
wall, I pushed the handle of the broom against the point 
of the knife until I had it fast, then drew it into the 
cell. When the jailor came along, the bunch of straw 
was lying on the floor of the cell, the knife concealed in 
it, and I was innocently eating my breakfast. " I left a 
knife on that mantel, who took it ?" he said. I looked 
up. "Who took that knife?" " I am sure there has 
been no one there since you passed," I replied. He 
went back and searched; came again, looked into my 
cell, tried the door of the corridor, and found it locked 
as he left it. He remarked to me, "You couldn't get 



176 THE SMOKED TANK. 

that knife if I did leave it there, I must have taken it 
with me, and some of them damn niggers have got it." 
The other prisoners were all negroes. He went back 
and searched again, then went out, saying that he had 
either left that knife outside, or else the jail was 
haunted. 

I was taken out on Monday and conveyed on the 
cars to Florence, where I was searched before being 
sent to the stockade, and the knife found. I told the 
officer who found it, where and how I got it, and asked 
him to return it to that jailor with my compliments. 

Here let me remark, that from the time I was re- 
captured in North Carolina, until I was delivered back 
at Florence, I saw and talked with many people, both 
soldiers and citizens, and received only such treatment 
as a soldier taken in honorable warfare ought to receive 
at the hands of his captors, except, perhaps, being put 
in a felon's cell, which may have been a matter of ne- 
cessity, rather than intentional degradation. 



CHAPTER XXI. 

ANOTHER STOCKADE — A MEANER MAN THAN WIRZ — OUT ON 
FAROLE — THE SMUGGLED STEER — NOTES FROM A DIARY. 

The return to a stockade I had very much dreaded, 
because I supposed I would have to endure tortures sim- 
ilar to those to which escaped prisoners brought back 
at Andersonville were subjected. Whatever of forti- 
tude I possessed was not of the kind that enables a man 
to endure physical pain. I was agreeably surprised on 
reaching the prison, to find that to be hand-cuffed, and 
my hand-cuffs fastened to those of five or six other 
prisoners, and to remain in this somewhat uncomfort- 
able position forty-eight hours without food, was the 
only punishment I was to receive. That was so much 
milder than I expected, that it really seemed no punish- 
ment at all. 

The forty-eight hours having expired, one Lieuten- 
ant Barrett came to release us and turn us into the 
stockade. He was a brute and a coward. Noticing 
my gray jacket, he swore that no damn Yankee should 
disgrace the uniform of South Carolina. I remarked 
that it was cold weather to wear nothing but a shirt. 
" Come with me," he said with brutal oaths, " I'll get a 
coat for you." He led me to the dead house, a kind of 
shed made with forks and poles, and covered and en- 
closed with brush. 

There were several corpses in there, each having 
on an old pair of drawers or ragged pants and a worn- 



178 THE SMOKED YANK. 

out blue blouse. "There," he said, " go in there and 
get a uniform; those Yanks are all in hell already and 
don't need any clothes." I told him that I would rather 
get along without any coat than to take one from a 
dead body. "None of your talk to me!" he replied. 
" Go in there and get one of those blouses." He drew 
and cocked his revolver as he spoke. To take a coat 
from a cold, stiff corpse, was no easy task. I finally got 
one off; the .inside was white in places with lice. The 
sight of it made me sick. " Put it on!" he roared. I 
held it up and said, " Lieutenant, look at it, let me have 
a chance to clean it first?" I stood in reach of him, and 
the thought that I could knock him down and run came 
into my mind just as a rebel sergeant, who stood near, 
and who had on a blue jacket, spoke up and said: " See 
here, lieutenant, let me take that gray jacket and give 
the Yank this blue one. I'd like mighty well to make 
such a trade." The brute evidently did not like to have 
a witness to his intended and needless brutality, and he 
reluctantly yielded. 

All survivors of Florence will remember that Bar- 
rett. They hated him worse, if anything, than they 
ever did Wirz. He seemed to take delight in subject- 
ing prisoners to every kind of insult, humiliation and 
cruelty whenever he could find or make an excuse for 
doing so. It was well for us that he was not in full 
charge as Wirz had been. 

The Florence stockade was the old Andersonville 
stockade duplicated. It was built the same way, the 
same dead-line, the lay of land, creek, and swamp, all 
the same. It contained about twelve acres and about 



THE SMOKED YANK. 179 

12,000 prisoners. The new prisoners brought there 
thought it a horrible place, but those from Anderson- 
ville did not complain. They had gone in when there 
were boughs and brush enough to enable them to build 
little huts, and they knew how. The rations were the 
same in quantity, but better in quality. They were is- 
sued raw, and wood furnished to cook with. Some 
clothing and blankets, though not nearly enough to go 
round, were sent by some sanitary relief committee 
from the North, and distributed. It was said that a suit 
of clothes and a pair of blankets were sent for every 
man, but not one-tenth of that amount was distributed 
to the prisoners. Colonel Iverson, who was in command 
at Florence, although a strict disciplinarian, was, I 
believe, a gentleman at heart. He seemed to do 
as well by us as circumstances would permit, and 
so far as I know, was never charged with personal 
cruelty. 

On being turned into the stockade, I was taken into 
a shanty by two of the boys from my regiment who had 
kept the blankets and cooking outfit that I had left 
when I got away. Life with me for a few weeks was 
again about the same as at Andersonville, except that 
I had some money and could piece out my scanty ra- 
tions and not actually suffer from hunger. Money 
among the prisoners had become scarce, and conse- 
quently trade was neither brisk nor profitable. I tried 
keeping a stand, but could not make anything out of it. 

One morning an officer came in to get fifty prison- 
ers to go out on parole of honor and chop wood for the 
prison. I had never chopped a cord of wood in my 



i&o THE SMOKED YANK. 

life, but wanted to be in the fresh air, so I managed to 
get taken out as a chopper. 

We were taken to the front of the colonel's tent. 
Our names taken, we held up our hands and took an 
oath that we would not violate our parole by going over 
a certain distance from the prison, nor by failing to re- 
turn at the proper time every night. We were furnished 
with axes and sent to the woods. 

The men divided into pairs, each pair had to cut 
two cords per day; the timber to be cut was on some 
swampy land about half a mile from the prison. I hap- 
pened to be paired with a man from Maine, a thorough 
woodsman and a good chopper. He soon discovered 
that I couldn't chop. My hands were blistered, and I was 
completely tuckered at the end of an hour. I said to 
him: " Partner, you see I can't keep up my end at this 
work, but there are persimmons in the woods around 
here, and cornfields with beans in the corn. I am some 
on beans and persimmons, and if you will do the chop- 
ping, I will pile the wood and divide persimmons and 
beans." He agreed. We had persimmons for dinner 
and our pockets full of beans to take back when we 
went in at night. The officers soon got on to the bean 
racket and searched us every night, taking everything 
of that kind away. 

They permitted each man to carry in with him a 
stick of wood at night, and we managed to get hollow 
logs to carry in and conceal our plunder in them. One 
evening they discovered this game. We had come to 
the prison gate, laid down our loads of wood in front of 
the officers' tents, and were waiting to get our extra ra- 



THE SMOKED YAiVA'. i8t 

tlons before going in. One of the men laid down a long 
hollow stick, full of beans. One of the officers was out 
of wood, and told his negro servant to take one of our 
logs. The negro happened to take the log that had the 
beans, and as he cut it, the beans rolled out and the 
officer saw them. After that the search at night in- 
cluded hollow logs. 

Besides the fifty choppers, one man was paroled as 
captain and another as clerk. Richard Wardell was the 
clerk. He and myself had been companions in daily 
rambles after beans and persimmons. In fact, our 
motto was: " Whatever your hands find to take let them 
take." One day Wardell told me that he had secured 
a better job, and he resigned the clerkship in my favor. 
At the same time he gave me a pocket memoranda to 
keep the roll of the choppers in. This book and a ten 
cent piece of script money are my only relics of prison 
life. 

It was now some time in December. Commencing 
Christmas, I kept a memoranda in this book, some of 
which I copy, because they show prison life as I saw it 
there. 

" Dec. 2S, i86^. To-day is the fourth Christmas I 
have spent away from home; may it be the last. The 
colonel said that as it was Sunday and Christmas too, 
we might have holiday and not go out to chop. Quite 
a favor, indeed, to be allowed to spend the principal 
holiday in the year in the most miserable hole on the 
face of the earth. Other days I go out on a parole of 
honor to chop wood for the prison. There are fifty-two 
in the chopping squad, including the captain of the 



i82 THE SMOKED TANK. 

squa<l and myself. The remuneration we receive is 
one pound of meal or rice and a half pound of beef per 
day, which it is my duty to draw and issue to the rest. 
The ration we draw in camp is one pound of meal and 
a little salt, with now and then a small quantity of beans 
or potatoes. I ate for breakfast to-day some rice and 
potatoes; for dinner, rice and meal dumplings, and will 
have some supper if we get rations to-day. Have just 
been to the gate to draw rations, but the rebels say we 
cannot have any to-day, because we did not work. 
There is a report here that Jeff Davis is dead, which is 
generally believed. There were some more galvanized 
Yanks turned in to-day. They were prisoners who took 
the oath of allegiance to the confederacy and went into 
the rebel army, but were so no-account that the rebels 
wouldn't have them. 

" Dec. 2(5, 1864. We are out in the swamp to-day. 
It rained last night, and the water is so high that the 
men can scarcely work. It is as warm here to-day as it 
is in May in Wisconsin. From all appearances, our 
days of confinement will soon be over. It is reported 
that Sherman is marching on Charleston. If he is, he 
will surely take it, and then it will be easy for him to 
send a raid here and release us. 

''Dec. 2"], 1S64. The rebs had their flag pole raised 
to-day that the Yankee sailors had been making for 
them. They made some of the prisoners raise it for 
them. I think it will not be long before there will be a 
Yankee flag flying on it. Our boys came a good joke 
on them while they were having it raised, which will 
not do to be written. I succeeded in getting Carr out 



THE SMOKED TANK. 183 

to-day to make axe-helves. He will commence to- 
morrow." 

The joke was this. While the men were chopping 
in the swamp, a fat steer came trotting through the 
woods, and scared by the noise of the axes he stopped 
near a tall Tennesseean who was standing on a log. 
The Tennesseean reached over and tapped him behind 
the horns with his axe. He dropped dead. We skinned 
and dressed him and divided the meat among the chop- 
pers. Knowing that we would be searched at night, 
and that hollow logs were played out, I devised this 
scheme to carry in the meat. The former captain of 
the squad had been sent away with some of the sick 

who were to be exchanged, and I had been given his 

/-it, 

place. I had two or three skillful axemen prepare logs 
of ash, the kind we usually carried in, and cut them ex- 
actly alike at each end, leaving as much uncut as could 
be broken. When broken, the splintered part of the 
ends where they were broken, came opposite each 
other. The logs were then carefully split so that the 
splintered part of each end was divided. The two 
halves were then hollowed out, making two troughs. 
These were then filled with steer and then the two 
parts carefully put together and fastened with small 
wedges at the end, put in across the split end. We 
arranged enough of these logs to carry all the steer, ex- 
cept the feet, head and such other parts as we used for 
dinner that day. There was no sign of a crack in these 
logs, and the boys who carried them, to prevent the dis- 
covery of the wedges that held them together at the 
ends, let the ends down in the muddy places when they 



184 THE ShfOlCED YAiSTK. 

Stopped to rest. We were properly searched that night, 
but the steer got through. Every night after that the 
ash logs, that had been prepared to carry in beans, and 
such other things as the boys secured, were laid in some 
appointed place, and I inspected them, allowing none 
to go in unless skilfully prepared. This game was not 
discovered while I was there. 

" Dec. 2S, 1864. Rained all the forenoon. The boys 
wanted to go in. Colonel Iverson said they might go, 
but they would have to stay, and he would get men to 
chop who could stand a little rain. We stayed, and 
were all soaked to the skin. Chopping wood in a cold 
chilly rain for a pint of corn-meal a day is tough. But 
a pint of corn-meal, added to our prison ration, keeps 
the gnawing wolf. Hunger, from the stomach. Besides, 
we are allowed to take in, at night, as much wood as 
we can carry, and what we get by selling, or trading 
our wood, added to our double ration of meal, enables 
us to live quite comfortably, as far as food and fuel go. 
Like kings compared to those, the common herd, the 
15,000 who are trying to eke out existence on a scant 
pint of meal and a small stick of wood per day. 

" We are called the chopping squad. Another 
squad, called the carrying squad, 200 in number, carry 
into the prison the wood that we chop. Each man has 
to carry on his back a quarter of a cord, each day, of 
green wood an average distance of one-half mile; and 
much of the way over a bridge, made of single foot 
logs, that crosses the swamp. The carriers are paid the 
same as the . choppers. They have one sergeant in 
charge of each hundred, and another to act as commis- 



THE SMOKED YANK. 185 

sary — that is, to draw and issue the pint of meal to each 
man; and another, called captain, who commands the 
squad, 

" The other day some prisoners managed to flank 
out with the carrying squad, and escape. Whether they 
were aided or not by the captain or sergeants is not 
known, but to-day the captain and sergeants are in the 
dungeon; their men are left inside, and there is an en- 
tirely new gang on the foot logs. Succeeded to-day in 
getting my friend, Horace C. Carr, paroled to make axe 
handles for our squad. He made six good handles. 
Says he can make them faster when he gets used to 
having enough to eat. 

^' Dec. 2g, 1S64, Has been a cold, windy day. The 
' rebs ' hoisted their flag on the new pole. Judging from 
their actions, they cannot have much respect for nor 
much faith in their cause. They stood around the pole 
with their hands in their pockets, and did not say a 
word, or offer to cheer when the flag went up. The 
Yanks in the stockade greeted it with loud groans and 
hisses. The body, or main part of this flag, is white. 
In the upper corner, next the pole, there is a red square, 
and across this red square there are blue bars with 
white border. On the bars there are thirteen stars. 

''Dec. JO, 1864. Has been a pleasant day, bright 
and balmy and warm. This is the Sunny South that we 
read about. Went with Dick Wardell on a little ramble 
into the country. Guess we stretched the limits of our 
parole. Stopped at a house to get a drink, and some 
ladies, who were there, talked with us quite awhile and 
were very polite. They asked us to come again next 



1 86 THE SMOKED TANK. 

week, and bring a ring that we have to sell, and an al- 
bum, if we could get one. We promised to do so. Was 
thinking to-day, as we returned, how much our prison 
life resembles the life of brutes. The horse, for in- 
stance, which is transferred from one place to another, 
and will go to and from each new stable, seldom making 
an effort to return to the old. So with us. Separated 
from friends and home, we are moved about from place 
to place, and still, our walk over, it seems perfectly nat- 
ural to turn to the stockade, where we have not as good 
as a manger to be stabled in. There is a rumor to-day 
that we are to be moved to Columbia. If we are, I 
shall make another attempt to gain my liberty. Would 
rather make my escape, and get to our lines, than re- 
ceive a thousand dollars and be exchanged. 

" Sat., Dec. ji, 1864. Cold and chilly, with some 
rain. Old Father Time seems to be dragging a heavy 
load; he moves so slow. Prospects for the new year 
gloomy enough. Could we poor mortals but lift the 
veil of uncertainty that seems to hang like a pall be- 
tween us and the future, we might see beyond brighter 
and happier days; and we might see beyond (surely, 
some would) that which would blanch the cheek with 
terror and kill the little courage we have. Better, per- 
haps, the ills we have than the evils we know not of. 
In an uncertain future there is a chance for hope at 
least, to all. ' The New Year comes to-night, mamma,' 
and this will be the fourth time it has come and found 
your boy away. May God grant that ere the close of 
it, he may be restored to you and home. 

''New Year, 1865. Fine morning. Air clear and 



THE SMOKED TANK. 187 

cold. Ground frozen. Last New Year's I was in my 
snug winter quarters at Vicksburg, enjoying, what I now 
recall as the comforts and blessings of freedom in a 
civilized land, and what I then considered the necessary 
hardships of a soldier's life. Thus ' Blessings brighten 
as they take their flight.' 

"For dinner George and I had a pie, made of boiled 
beef and flour dumplings. George, my bunk-mate, is 
a nurse in a hospital. He has been getting flour for his 
extra ration. I have been getting beef instead of meal. 
We have been saving our flour and beef for three days, 
and we have had for this place a grand dinner. We 
kept a blanket over the front of our mansion while we 
ate, so that our hungry neighbors might not stare at us 
with starving eyes." 

Here follows an inventory of my worldly effects, 
the chief of which was a two-dollar greenback, then an 
inventory of bad habits, the chief of which was swear- 
ing; then moral reflections and promises of reform. 
Don't conclude from this that I was then a democrat. 

" Jan. 2, 1865. Out with the chopping squad, as 
usual. Sold Brunt's watch to-day to one of the rebel 
cavalrymen, for $1.25 in money and $1.15 in trade. 

" Jan. J, i86s. Lovely day. Air as soft and balmy 
as a May morning in God's country. Such days warm 
my blood, and make me feel cagey. Have been think- 
ing up plans of escape all day. Went over to see the 
lady who wanted the ring. She said she had spent all 
her money and couldn't take it. Guess she isn't much 
of a lady after all. Believe she is a kind of a camp- 
follower. 



1 88 THE SMOKED TANK. 

" The fine weather has had a bad effect on the par- 
oled men. Thirteen of them skipped out to-day. One 
of them, James Coon, belonged to our squad. I expect 
we will all lose our job." 

The James Coon, mentioned above, was one of the 
party with whom I was handcuffed when I was brought 
back, after my first attempt to escape. He had been 
trying for several days to induce me to run away with 
him, in violation of our parole of honor. Although I 
was always thinking and planning escape I did not like 
the idea of violating a parole. Technically and liter- 
ally considered, I had never been paroled. When the 
chopping squad was first called for, and taken out to 
be paroled, the rebel officer, who had charge of the 
matter, formed us in double line, and then proceeded 
to take down each man's name. He wrote one or two 
names, and then to expedite matters, called for one of 
us to do the job of writing. Several of us stepped out, 
and I was chosen. I stood beside the officer and wrote 
each name that was given him and repeated to me. 
When the roll was complete he ordered the men in the 
line to hold up each his right hand, and take an oath, 
called the parole of honor. I stood beside the officer, 
facing the prisoners, and did not hold up my hand ; did 
not think of it at the time, and the officer did not notice 
me. Hence, I was not, in fact, paroled. Coon knew 
of it, and used that as an argument to persuade me to 
go with him. Whether it is justifiable, under any cir- 
cumstances, for a man to violate such an oath of honor 
in order to escape from captors, is a moral problem not 
easy of solution. Of course, if prisoners-of-war werq 



THE SMOKED YANK. 189 

receiving honorable treatment there could be no excuse 
or justification for one who would violate a parole, vol- 
untarily taken. But just how much unnecessary, unjus- 
tifiable and unusual cruelty a man must suffer, before 
he would be justified in breaking a parole to get away, 
that is a question, " Thou shalt not kill," is a command 
of God, and a law of every civilized people. But in no 
civilized nation is a man required to lose his own life 
rather than to take that of his assailant. 

Coon started soon after we got into the woods that 
morning. I was at that time captain of the chopping 
squad. As Coon had confided his plans to me I could 
not betray him, although I knew that his going would, 
in all probability, result in all the rest of us losing our 
places. That meant more than the loss of a pint of 
meal a day; it meant that we must stay in the stockade, 
with the rest of the prisoners, and live on a pint of meal 
a day. It diminished the chances for life to all of us. 
None of the choppers, except myself, knew that he was 
going. He was not missed until the noon roll-call, 
which I was required to make each day. Thert the 
boys supposed he had gone after beans or persimmons. 
About 2 o'clock I went to Colonel Iverson's quarters, 
and told him that one of my men was missing at roll- 
call. Coon had consented that I should report him at 
that time, in order, i'f possible, to save myself from the 
dungeon, and the rest of the boys from being left inside. 
My diary discloses the result. 



CHAPTER XXII. 

PAROLE OF HONOR PLAYED OUT — A SCHEME FOR ESCAPE — 
ALL IS FAIR IN LOVE AND WAR — BRIBING A YANKEE 
WITH A rebel's money — I GO AFTER SHAKES AND DO 
NOT RETURN. 

" Jan 4, i86s. Weather fine to-day, but it rained 
last night, giving the boys who ran away a good chance 
to elude the dogs. Our squad was not taken out to-day. 
None of the paroled men went out. George will sleep 
at the hospital hereafter, and I will be alone in the 
shanty. Lost $20 of confederate money last night. It 
must have been stolen. 

" Had a very strange dream. Thought I had, in 
some way, escaped and got home. When I entered the 
house all our family, and uncle's family, and many of 
the young people of the neighborhood were there. 
They all gathered around me and began to talk, and 
tried to shake hands with me, but I pushed them all 
aside, and ran to mother and kissed her, and was so 
overcome with joy that I laid my head in her lap and 
wept for a long time. Then I shook hands with the 
rest, telling them it was the happiest day of my life. It 
would have been. 

'' Jan. s, iS6s- Parole of honor played out. New 
squads are being organized. None of the old hands are 
allowed to go. Colonel Iverson came in to see about 
the new men for parole, I asked him to let me have 
charge of the choppers again. He refused, but said I 



THE SMOKED YANK. 191 

might go as a chopper, if I liked. I told him I could not 
chop a cord of wood a day, and that if he did not let me 
out as before, I would try to escape. He said: 'All 
right, my boy, you are welcome to try.' " 

I did try. Although I wrote memoranda each day 
I could not write everything, for fear that if I should 
escape I might be captured with the book upon me. 

" Jan. 6, iS6S' The ' rebs ' took out the new squads 
yesterday afternoon, and three of the prisoners ran 
away. They do not take any out to-day on account of 
the rain, they say. I have a kind of presentiment that 
a change, for better or for worse, is about to take place 
in my fortunes. Am afraid it is for the worse. Misfor- 
tunes never come singly, they say, and they seem to 
have begun coming to me when I lost my job outside. 

" Jan. 7, 186^. No better prospects as yet for the 
future, though there is considerable talk of ' general 
exchange.' Have been thinking of trying to get out of 
this infernal hole. If I could get out on parole to work, 
could stay more contentedly, but I can't stand the 
pressure here. George has been sick, and is now a 
patient in the hospital. 

'' Jan. 8, i86s. Ten months a prisoner. Am going 
to try to get out the first dark night. 

" Jan. g, i86^. Nothing particular transpired to- 
day. Tried to get the lieutenant to let me out on 
parole again, but he would not, and so I picked out a 
place to climb over the stockade." 

The truth is that while I was out on parole I had 
studied out a plan for escape, and had been busy work- 
ing on it from the day my parole ceased. I had noticed 



192 THE SMOKED YANK. 

that some of the paroled men who worked in the hos- 
pital, and about the commissary department of the 
prison, helping to carry in and issue the rations, and to 
do other work that required them to pass out and in 
frequently, were provided with passes. I had noticed 
these passes, and believed I could make one that would 
let me pass an ordinary guard, especially after dark. 
These passes were written in ink, on the face, in a hand 
easily imitated, and were stamped on the back with a 
red ink stamp. 

My plan was to imitate the handwriting on the 
front and make a stamp on the back with a red pencil. 
The first thing to do was to get the pencil. I thought 
that among 15,000 Yankee prisoners I could either find 
one or get it made. So I began to inquire for one. 
vSoon found that it would be hard to find, so I began 
systematically to inquire, going through the whole of 
J, 000, or detachment, before trying the next. On the 
second day I found a man who had a short red pencil, 
and secured it. Then I had to get some one who had 
a pass, to lend it to me so that I could learn to imitate 
it. My recollection is that I got my friend Wardell to 
get a pass for me- Do not remember whether I told 
him what I wanted to do or not. Anyway I had one of 
the genuine passes and set about learning to counter- 
feit. I began first on the stamp and have now in my 
note book, from which these memoranda are copied, 
my first effort to make the stamp. It is in this form but 

in red: '^^.^Z^^^^fZi:^^:^^ 

fe CHEATHAM (^ 



THE SMOKED TANK. 193 

Cheatham was the name of one of the rebel offi- 
cers. While I sat in my shebang, as we called it, at 
work on this stamp, it occurred to me that some man 
among those who had such passes might be induced to 
let me use a pass to get out with, and then send it in 
by some other man. | 

I knew of no man who had such a pass who would 
be likely to trust a stranger with it. No one with whom 
I was on terms of intimacy had one, and to ask a 
stranger to do for me what might cost him his life, 
seemed to be useless. I had nothing to offer as a bribe, 
except a few dollars in confed., as we called the rebel 
money. My only friend in the camp who had money 
was Wardell. The moment I thought of him in that 
connection, I knew that the problem was solved. Dick 
Wardell we called him, — I suppose Richard was his 
name, was then a handsome young man, below medium 
height, but well built and in every way a clean-cut, 
, shrewd Yankee, probably twenty-five years old. He 
was one of the chopping squad when we were first 
taken out, but he soon obtained what he thought a 
better thing. 

One of the rebel officers took a fancy to Dick and 
hired him to stay in the stockade and exchange confed- 
erate money for greenbacks. At that time a dollar of 
our money was worth twenty to thirty dollars of rebel 
money, at Charleston. The rebel officers were buying 
greenbacks in the stockade and selling them at Char- 
leston. They were paying about ten for one. To facil- 
itate business, they had forbidden the rebel sutler, who 
had a store in the prison, taking any greenbacks from 



r94 THE SMOKED TAlSTK. 

the prisoners in payment for his goods. The Yankees 
who had greenbacks must first exchange for confed. 
before they could trade with the sutler. 

I called on Dick Wardell. " Dick," said I, "would 
3'ou like to get away?" 

" You bet your bottom dollar," said Dick. 

" Haven't you got a roll of confed. that belongs to 
a reb?" 

" Yes." 

'' How much?" 

" About fifteen hundred." 

" Would you be willing to buy your way out with 
it?" 

Dick was an honest fellow and he didn't at first 
take kindly to the scheme. We talked about it a long 
time. I told him about my first attempt, how we would 
be helped by the negroes, and showed him on an old 
map that Sherman was heading toward Savannah, 
where we could meet his army without having to go far.^ 
We did not then know that Sherman had already taken 
Savannah. In fact, I persuaded Wardell that as all 
was fair in love and war, if he could get away by using 
the rebel's money, he ought to do it. Once in the no- 
tion he took hold with a will. He knew a Yankee ser- 
geant who was working in the hospital. The hospital 
was about an acre of ground in one corner of the stock- 
ade, and partitioned off from the remainder of the 
prison by posts with a rail on top. This sergeant and 
his squad of about ten men, were all on parole. They 
were employed building sheds in the hospital (so called) 
for the sick to lie under. These sheds were made by 



THE SMOKED TANK. 195 

putting forked logs in the ground, poles on the forks, 
one being a ridge pole, and the others lower, so as to 
form a roof when covered with shakes or long shingles. 
Other men were employed to cut the forks and poles 
and make the shakes in the woods The sergeant and 
his men carried them from the woods into the hospital 
corner of the stockade and put up the sheds. 

In order that these men might pass out and in at 
the hospital gate, they were provided with passes. This 
sergeant agreed to pass Wardell and myself out for 
twelve hundred dollars in confederate money. Early 
on the next morning after this agreement was made, 
Wardell and I, in order to get into the hospital, pro- 
cured a stretcher and found a sick man to carry in. 
Having gained admission to the hospital we found that 
the sergeant had taken one of his men into his confi- 
dence and that we were to use that man's pass. 

This plan of escape may, to the reader, seem quite 
tame, requiring neither nerve nor daring for its execu- 
tion. To step into line with eight or ten other men, 
receive a pass, and then walk out of the gate, passing a 
guard who would merely look at your pass, did seem a 
simple and an easy thing to do. It was neither simple 
nor tame nor easy. That guard had a loaded gun. 
His instructions were to shoot, without halting, any 
prisoner he saw attempting to escape. We were told 
that a furlough was granted as a reward to every guard 
who killed a prisoner attempting to escape. We did 
not know how many times the guard on duty that 
morning had been there before. If he had been there 
before, he might notice a change of one man in the 



T96 THE SMOKED TANK. 

number entitled to pass. Should he detect us in our 
scheme, he might carry out instructions and shoot us 
then and there. If he did not shoot, but merely handed 
us over to the officer on duty, hanging by the thumbs 
and thirty days in the dungeon on scant bread and 
water, would surely follow. Few men endured these 
tortures who were not by them so broken down in 
health and spirit that they soon after succumbed to the 
ordinary hardships of the prison life. 

It was a dangerous plan, too, for the sergeant. It 
was a violation of the parole under which he was en- 
trusted with the passes. Death was supposed to be the' 
punishment for violating a parole. We thought of and 
talked of all these things that morning, the sergeant, 
Wardell and myself. More than twenty years have 
passed and the vividness with which I recall the inci- 
dents of that morning, is evidence to me that one at 
least of the three had need to summon up his courage. 

The sense of personal danger that one feels under 
such circumstances, is not the sole cause of agitated 
feeling. No ambitious student, however carefully 
trained, can take the rostrum on his graduating day, 
without more or less of fear and trembling. Many a 
lawyer, even after long practice, tries in vain to sleep 
the night before an important trial . They are not of 
common mould who can perform a tragical act on the 
stage of -life without perturbance of soul. The little 
boy giving his name on that first day at school, the 
maiden approaching the altar on her bridal day, the 
soldier standing in line of battle with the enemy in full 
view, it comes alike to all. 



THE SMOKED TANK. 19^ 

Aside from the danger involved, this was to me a 
critical moment. For ten months, my thoughts by day, 
my dreams by night, had been of escape. I was about 
to try. Succeed, and home and mother, father, broth- 
ers and sisters, and all that life gives promise of to a 
boy of nineteen, were before me; fail, and tortures and 
hunger were sure, and perhaps starvation, sickness, 
and death. 

The sergeant was very anxious to have Wardell go 
first, because Wardell had the money which he was to 
hand over when he was on the outside. Wardell in- 
sisted on my going first, because I had escaped once, 
and he thought that I could make a second attempt 
with greater coolness than one who had never tried, so 
I stepped into the line and took the pass. 

There were nurses and patients of the hospital and 
workmen all around us, who knew nothing- of what was 
going on. The rest of the men with passes did not 
know. It seemed to me that every man around me 
must see in my face all that was in my mind. The 
guard, to my immense relief, took no more notice of 
me than of the others. As had been arranged between 
us, I went to work carrying in poles and shingles with 
the others. After we had gone out and come in two or 
three times, the guard concluded that he knew us and 
ceased to look at the passes. Then the sergeant went 
out with me, and I gave him back the pass which he 
was to take in and give to Wardell, while I was to re- 
main out until Wardell should join me. It would not 
do, however, for Wardell to attempt to pass the same 
guard. He must wait until that guard's two hours were 



igS THE SMOKED TANK. 

Up and another took his place. I sat under a tree 
waiting; saw the reHef guard go round, was expecting 
every moment to see Wardell come through the gate, 
when I saw the sergeant coming out. I knew in a mo- 
ment that something had gone wrong. His agitation 
was to me evident, from the manner of his walk. 
When he got to me he was so badly scared he could 
hardly speak. " You must come back in," he said. 
" Here, take the pass, go get a load of shakes and come 
right in." I asked him what the trouble was. He said 
that we were found out; that an officer had come into 
the hospital after Wardell just as Wardell was about to 
come out. 

What had transpired I do not know. I have never 
since seen or heard from either that sergeant or War- 
dell. It occurred to me, however, that the officer for 
whom Wardell was exchanging money, had gone into 
the stockade to see Wardell on business and had been 
told that Wardell had taken a sick man to the hospital, 
and that the ofiicer had very naturally gone there to 
find him. Anyway, I said to the sergeant that I needed 
no pass to come back in. The guard never asked for a 
pass from a man who wanted to go in. I told him to go 
in and I would go to the woods after the load of shakes 
and we would try again some other day. He went in 
and I went to the woods, not to get shakes, but to shake 
from my feet the dust, from my life, the horrors of that 
prison pen. 



CHAPTER XXIII. 

BLOOD HOUNDS IN SIGHT — WAKE UP THE WRONG FAMILY — 
GENTLEMEN (vERY LITTLE) OF COLOR — I PLAY THAT I 
AM A SLAVE OWNER AND TALK WITH REBEL SOLDIERS. 

" Jan. lo, i86s- I am a free man to-day, but don't 
know how long I shall have the good fortune to remain 
so. Last night was a dark night and I had no trouble 
in climbing over the stockade. It is noon now and has 
commenced to rain." 

Such is the entry made in my pocket diary on the 
day that I went to the woods for my last load of shakes. 
So written for the purpose of misleading my captors, 
should I have been recaptured. When I left the ser- 
geant, as before narrated, I walked leisurely toward the 
woods, meeting many of the paroled men and some of 
the rebel soldiers. No one said anything indicating 
suspicion. Some of the rebel soldiers knew me as the 
captain of the chopping squad, and probably supposed 
I was still out in that capacity. Once in the woods I 
avoided meeting anyone and walked rapidly toward the 
north. When I had gone what I thought to be about a 
mile, I went into the swamp, got into the creek that 
flowed through it, and waded up the stream what I 
judged to be another mile. By this means I hoped to 
avoid leaving any scent for the pack of blood hounds 
that were taken every evening around the prison about 
two miles out. These hounds were so trained that they 
would take and follow the track of any prisoner who 



200 THE SMOKED YANK. 

during the day had crossed the Hmits of the parole. As 
I waded along in the water thinking I was far enough 
out to be safe, and feeling pretty tired, for wading up 
stream in water, and cold water at that, is hard work, 
it began to rain. Knowing that a hard rain would as 
effectually remove all scent from my tracks as a running 
stream, I left the water. I sat down with my back 
against a large tree, to rest. To keep off the rain, I 
had secured a large piece of bark and leaned it against 
the tree and sat under it. Sitting there, protected from 
the fast falling rain, I wrote the notes last quoted. Had 
just finished when I heard behind me, voices of men, 
barking of dogs and the sound of horses' feet. Look- 
ing carefully, I saw through the thick woods the squad 
of rebel cavalry and the pack of blood hounds, passing 
along a road that crossed the creek in sight of where I 
sat. Had I kept on wading up the creek I would surely 
have been so close to them at the crossing, as to have 
made my discovery by the dogs almost certain. They 
crossed the creek and stopped at a farm house that 
stood on a hill, a quarter of a mile or so beyond, and I 
crossed the dangerous line behind the dreaded hounds, 
and went rejoicing on my way, the greatest danger to 
the escaping prisoner from a rebel prison, safely passed. 
The rain came down in torrents, relieving me from all 
anxiety in regard to the dreaded hounds. I traveled as 
nearly as I could tell, North and West, intending to 
strike the railroad that runs West from Florence, so as 
to have some guide to go by in the night. Soon after 
dark I came to a plantation where there were negro 
quarters, and after some reconnoitering, I entered one. 




BLOOD-HOUNDS IN SIGHT. 



THE SMOKED YANK. 201 

made myself known, and was received with generous 
hospitality. A guard was immediately placed so that 
no man, woman or child of my race might come upon 
me unawares, and I was warmed and fed in truly chiv- 
alrous style by the grateful negroes. Grateful then, for 
blessings only hoped for, and fearful lest their deeds of 
gratitude might be discovered, and bring them present 
woe. 

Having rested, and had my clothing well dried, 
and my shoes dried and softened with grease, I re- 
sumed my way along the railroad track. Came into 
Lynchburg about daylight, and there saw an old " un- 
cle " getting ready to kill hogs. He was building up a 
great log-heap of dry logs, with " fat" pine for kindling, 
and putting stones among the logs, with which to heat 
the water, to scald the hogs, just as I had helped to do 
often at home. He no sooner learned that I was an 
escaped Yankee, than he urged me to "get away from 
hyer, young massa. Too many folks gwine to be 
around hyer soon." But he told me how to find an- 
other black man, whom I could trust, and to him I 
went. He took me to a safe place in the woods, built 
for me a nice fire beside a big log; then brought me 
food and quilts to wrap up in; cared for me as tenderly 
as a mother does for her sick boy, and then left me 
there to sleep. My diary reads: 

''Jan. II, iS6^. It rained until sundown. I was 
completely soaked. Stopped about lo o'clock and got 
my clothes partially dried, then came four miles this 
side of Lynchburg. It was daylight when I stopped, 
completely fagged out; was so tired that I could not 



20 2 THE SMOKED TANK. 

have walked another mile. My feet are blistered, and 
I am stiff and sore all oyer. Made a fire in the woods, 
and have stayed by it all day. Shall try to reach Sump- 
terville, twenty-two miles, to-night." 

I dared not mention, in my notes, the stranger 
friend who built the fire, and bathed my feet, and rub- 
bed my swollen joints, and brought me food and bed, 
lest some mishap might cause his left hand to know 
what his right hand had been doing. 

That night I followed the wagon-road to Sumpter- 
ville. Nearing the town, and daylight coming on, I 
began to look for some negro quarter, where I could 
make myself known, and secure the usual assistance. 
At length, I saw near the road two rows of negro quar- 
ters. I went among them searching for one, the in- 
mates of which were up. There was a stillness about 
them that made me feel suspicious. Negroes are early 
risers, and you seldom find them all asleep on any large 
plantation. At length, finding no signs of anyone being 
awake, I rapped on the door of one of the houses. 
After repeated rapping some one called out: " Who's 
there?" It was no negro's voice. " Who's there .f*" came 
again, and evidently the voice of a white woman. I 
thought best to answer, so I said: " I am a soldier, and 
have lost my way." Then I heard: "John, John, wake 
up, there is some one at the door." When John awojce 
that woman must have had a hard time making him 
believe that there had been anybody at the door. I was 
wretchedly tired and my feet were painfully sore, but 
the first few minutes after leaving that door, I in some 
way got over a good deal of ground. I afterward 



THE SMOKED TANK. 203 

learned that those negro quarters were occupied by the 
famihes of poor white soldiers, who were being cared 
for by the town, and that some of the soldiers were at 
home on furlough. 

Fearing pursuit, I left the highway and ran off 
across the fields. As daylight was coming on, it was 
necessary for me to find a hiding place for the day, so I 
made for the first plantation in sight — a large one. 
There I found the usual negro quarters on each side of 
the street, leading from the planter's house to the fields. 
Partly to get as far from white people as possible, and 
partly because there was smoke coming from the chim- 
ney, I knocked on the door of a house at the far end of 
the row. The door was opened by a gentleman of 
color, but not very much color; probably an octo- 
roon, but as white as myself. Entering, there sat an- 
other gentleman of very pale color, dressed in broad- 
cloth, a ring on his finger, a gold watch and chain — a 
regular dandy — smoking a finely flavored cigar by the 
fireplace. Well, I thought to myself, as I accepted a 
proffered cigar and took a seat, this is a pretty kettle 
of fish; I am in a scrape now, sure. In order to find out 
how the land lay I kept the two men talking. They 
were brothers. One was the overseer of the planta- 
tion, the other a clerk in a store at Charleston, out on 
a visit. They were slaves. Gathering from their con- 1 
versation that their sympathies were on the right side, 
I made myself and my wants known, and was at once 
carried off to a safe hiding place in the woods. To 
build a fire they thought might lead to discovery, so 
they furnished me with blankets to wrap myself up in 



204 THE SMOKED TANK. 

while I slept. These men thought the best way for me 
to get beyond Sumpterville was to go straight through. 
They said: "Let one of our black boys walk behind 
you, just as though he was following his master, and no 
one will suspect you of being a Yankee." There were 
two battalions of rebel soldiers camped near the town, 
and they were roaming around everywhere. As I was 
as likely to meet them one place as another, I took the 
overseer's advice, and that night I started out, followed 
by my guide. No negro driver ever appeared less 
afraid of being noticed than I did, as I stalked through 
Sumpterville that evening, closely followed by my black 
slave. I had so little fear of detection that I walked up 
to the camp-fire of some of the soldiers, smoked a pipe 
of tobacco, and talked with them some time, taking 
care, however, to keep some of them talking all the 
time, and leave as soon as I had got all the information 
I wanted. These soldiers were on their way to the 
front to stop Sherman, their train being delayed by the 
washing away of a bridge. My guide took me a few 
miles beyond the town and left me with another negro, 
with whom I stayed the rest of the night and the next 
day, in order to get my blistered feet in better con- 
dition. 



CHAPTER XXIV. 

A PRESSING INVITATION — I PADDLE A CANOE — AM CAUGHT 
IN A " NIGGAH HOUSE " — A CHIVALROUS LADY PLEADS 
MY CAUSE — A NIGHT IN A SWAMP. 

''Jan. 14, 1865. Did not reach the Santee river last 
night; it was farther than I thought. I had several 
narrow escapes, met ten or twelve soldiers at one time; 
believe they were deserters from Charleston. Met an 
officer in the road about one o'clock; came upon him 
unexpectedly and was somewhat confused, but man- 
aged to answer his questions, though he did not seem 
to be very well satisfied with my answers. His name 
was Captain Beetsom." 

Was walking along a well-traveled road, plantation 
fields each side, and a full moon shining very brightly, 
when I met the officer mentioned. I heard what I sup- 
posed to be two negroes talking in a fence corner, and 
not being afraid of negroes, did not seek to avoid them. 
Coming to where they stood talking in the corner of a 
rail fence, one proved to be a rebel officer. 

I said, " How d'y do;" and would have passed along, 
but the ofiicer indicated an almost commanding desire 
for further conversation, and I had either to stop or to 
run. 

He wanted to know where I was going, why I trav- 
eled so late, where I belonged, etc. I told him I be- 
longed tq. Major 's battalion, giving the name of 

one of the majors whose command was at Sumpterville, 



2o6 THE SMOKED YANK. 

that we were on the way to Branchville when our train 
was delayed by the bridge being washed away; that my 
father lived across the Santee; that I had obtained 
leave to visit my home, and meet the regiment at 
Branchville. 

"What is your father's name?" I gave it. "Where 
does he live?" "Ten miles beyond the ferry." "In 
what parish?" That was a stunner. I didn't know 
what he meant by parish nor the name of any. Un- 
consciously I began to stammer. He instantly, and 
probably as unconsciously, sought to assist my impedi- 
ment of speech by speaking the names of two. Thus 
assisted, I easily gave one of the names. 

His suspicions seemed to be allayed, and we fell 
into pleasant conversation. Talked of the war and its 
prospects, of Sherman and his probable movements. 
He told me of his experience in the Atlanta campaign. 
How he had been wounded and was now at home on 
sick leave. Even removed his clothes and showed me 
where the ball went in, just above his pants' pocket, and 
where it came out. 

When I proposed to go, he very cordially asked me 
to spend the rest of the night at his house. Couldn't 
possibly do so; must get to my father's early in the 
morning and to Branchville the next night. " But you 
can't cross the river before the ferry goes," he said, 
" and I will take you there on horseback as soon as we 
have breakfast and In plenty of time for the ferry. It 
only makes one trip a day." Thus he pressed me to 
stay in the kindest and most hospitable manner, I 
dared not risk it, and still I had no good excuse to offer. 



THE SMOKED YANK. 207 

I was in a dilemma, but I cut it short by thanking him 
for his courtesy and walking off. 

Out of sight, my walk became a run, which I kept 
up for several miles, then stopped to listen. With my 
ear to the ground I heard the patter of a horse's feet; 
got behind a tree, and soon after along came the genial 
officer on his horse, a large revolver in one hand. He 
passed by and I followed him. Although he rode at a 
brisk canter, I kept close enough to hear his horse, be- 
lieving it safer to do so than to run the risk of being 
ambushed. 

A few miles further on he came to a plantation, 
rode up to the house and aroused the planter. I slipped 
up close enough to hear all that was said. He had 
come to the conclusion that I was a deserter. The two 
men woke up the negroes at the one negro house and 
searched the house. My pursuer then concluded that 
he had passed me on the road and went back. The 
planter went into his house and I was soon in the 
hands of my friends in the negro quarters. One of 
these took me to where the ferry crossed the Santee. 

The streams at that time were all swollen by the 
heavy winter rains. The swamp that bordered the 
Santee on that side was full of water so that the ferry 
had to make a trip of three miles. I was concealed 
near the ferry landing, and some negroes who were 
going across understood my situation and were to make 
it all right with the ferryman, who was a negro. The 
ferry came over about ten in the morning, bringing a 
rebel officer on horseback, who had pistols in the hols- 
ters of his saddle. I kept out of his sight until he rode 



2o8 THE SMOKED YANK. 

away, then came from my hiding place. When the 
ferry was about to start, another white man arrived on 
horseback who wanted to cross also. This man was a 
surgeon in the rebel army. 

The ferry started, the old ferryman poling the boat 
along in water three or four feet deep, following the 
opening among the trees made by the submerged 
wagon-road. We had not gone far before the rebel 
began to ask me questions. I told him about the same 
story that I had told the officer in the road the night 
before. The ferryman, and the other negroes who 
were crossing and who were helping to push the boat, 
heard what the rebel was saying, and were evidently 
alarmed. 

There was a canoe or dug-out tied to the side of 
the boat. The old ferryman spoke to me, saying: 
"Say da', young massa, can you paddle a canoe.''" " I 
reckon I can," said I. "Then I'se mighty glad if you'd 
git into dat ar' canoe an' keep it from gittin' smashed 
up 'twixt de boat an' de trees." 

I got into the canoe, well knowing that the darky 
had planned to get me away from the rebel. I paddled 
ahead, gradually drawing away from the ferry until a 
turn in the road put me out of sight, then I paddled 
with all my might. Reaching the swollen and swift- 
flowing river, I did not feel safe in the easily tipped 
canoe. Money wouldn't have hired me to attempt a 
crossing in such a craft. It was getting dark too. 
There seemed no other way to do, so I ventured into 
the rushing water and safely landed on the other side. 

Fearing the rebel had regarded me with suspicion, 



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THE SMOKED TANK. 209 

and desiring to mislead him, I pulled the canoe out of 
the water some distance below the road, and hid it in 
the brush, then concealed myself near enough to the 
landing to hear what might be said when the boat ar- 
rived. The way that old negro lashed me with his 
tongue when he got over and saw no boat, was amusing. 
The rebel, too, had thought all the time that I was a 
deserter. When he rode off, I came out as the smart 
old darky had expected me to do, and he explained 
with great gusto how he had done " all dat cussin' jus' 
to t'row dat white ossifer off from de scent; knowed all 
de time dat you would turn up roun' hyer sumwheres, 
soon as dat odder white man done gone out e'n de 
way." 

It will be noticed that in my notes taken as I trav- 
eled, little reference is made to the assistance received 
from colored friends. They furnished me with food, 
concealed me in some place where I could sleep during 
the day, either in secluded woods by a fire, or covered 
up in a fodder or gin house. To have mentioned these 
things, would have exposed them to possible discovery 
and punishment. My notes of that crossing are as fol- 
lows: 

''Jan. 15, 1865. Did not travel last night. Heard 
that the swamp was up so that I could not get to the 
river on foot. Came to the river to-day and had to 
wade through water up to my shoulders to get there. 
Some negroes are here who have been waiting two 
days toget across. They say the ferry is three miles 
long, and that the boat will not be over until to- 
morrow. 



THE SMOKED TANK. 



" Jan. i6, 1865. The boat came over to-day. A 
rebel officer came over with it; managed to escape his 
notice. Just as we were about to start, a white man, 
a surgeon in the rebel army, rode up. Did not see him 
in time to get out of the way, and had to cross over 
with him. He asked me some troublesome questions, 
but did not make much." 

Having obtained directions from the negroes, I 
started on toward Branchville. 

I walked rapidly until about one o'clock, when, 
being tired and hungry, and seeing a light in a negro 
quarter that I was passing, I concluded to rest and get 
something to eat. 

In answer to my rap on the door, "Who's da?" 
came in a woman's voice. " Is that you aunty?" I said. 
" Where is uncle? I want to see him." "Who's you 
prowlin' around dis time o' night?" I told her that I 
was a white man and had lost my way. She said her 
man had gone to a " white folks' " house, and that I 
could go over there to see him. I gave her to under- 
stand that I did not want to be seen by any white man, 
and, if I had told her why, it would have been all right. 
I prevailed on her to open the door so that I might sit 
by the fire until uncle got back. I sat down by the fire 
when she remarked, " Dat fire's gittin' mighty low," 
and went out. I heard her chopping with an axe 
and supposed she would be in presently to replenish 
the fire. 

The next thing I heard was, " Come out of that 

niggah quarter! you damn white of a — — -." I 

opened the door and there in the moonlight, twenty 



THE SMOKED TANK. 211 

yards away, stood a young man in rebel uniform, with a 
double-barreled shot-gun in his hands. 

As I stood in the door-way he gave vent to a per- 
fect volume of oaths and vile epithets, such as, " Come 

out of that ar' niggah house, or I will blow your d d 

head off!" Putting on more assurance than I felt, I 
said, " You had better find out who you are talking to, 
sir, before you use such language. If you are so keen 
to shoot, you better go to the front and try it on the 
Yanks." 

Somewhat cooled down, he then asked me to give 
an account of myself. I gave him the Sumpterville 
delayed-train story. 

" What regiment does your battalion belong to?" he 
said. This was another stunner. I did not remember 
to have heard the number of the regiment. Answering 
at random, " The 37th South Carolina," I said. " The 
h — 1 you do! There ain't no 37th South Carolina. 
Can't play that game on me. I arrest you, sir." 

I stuck to my story, and intimated that a South 
Carolina soldier must be lamentably ignorant of what 
was going on in the state if he didn't know that there 
was a 37th South Carolina. I told him that if he even 
had this year's almanac in the house, I could prove it to 
him. He took me into the house, saying that he was 
going to Orangeburg after breakfast, and that he would 
take me along and let me convince the provost marshal 
that there was a 37th South Carolina. 

We sat down by the fire. I looked the young man 
over and concluded that if he undertook to take me to 
Branchville, as he proposed, in a one-horse buggy and 



212 THE SMOKED YANK. 

guard me with a shot-gun, there would be trouble on 
the way. Still the best plan for me was to get out of 
the scrape by strategy if possible. 

The young man belonged to the rebel cavalry. He 
was at home on a furlough, and was going to Orange- 
ville that day to get married. His brother had left 
about one o'clock, so as to reach a station in time for 
an early train that would take him back to his regiment 
at Richmond, The negro man had gone with this 
brother. The negro woman took me for one of the 
rebel deserters that infested the neighborhood, often 
robbing chicken-roosts and pig-pens, and making them- 
selves a terror to the negroes generally. She had chop- 
ped with the axe to make believe, then ran to the white 
folks' house, where the people were up to " speed the 
parting guest," and told them that there was one of the 
deserters in her house. 

The soldier was right about there being no South 
Carolina regiment numbered thirty-seven. There were 
more than thirty-seven regiments in the army from 
South Carolina, but as each city was ambitious to put 
the first regiment in the field, there was a ist South 
Carolina regiment from Charleston, a ist from Colum- 
bia, and so on. A 2d, from several places, and so with 
each number. So, at least, this soldier said. Still, I 
persistently stuck to my story; claimed that my regi- 
ment was organized in the northeast corner of the 
state, was made up lately of home-guards, old men and 
boys, and I believe he finally concluded that it was poss- 
ible for him to be wrong. 

We sat there talking until nearly breakfast time. 



THE SMOKED TANK. 



213 



Then the young soldier, taking his shot-gun, went out 
on the porch, and as he stood there giving some direc- 
tions about the horse he was to drive to Orangeburg, 
his sister-in-law came into the room. 

She was the wife of the soldier who had left at one 
o'clock, and mother of a bright little girl of five or six 
years, whom I held on my knee and had been telling 
stories to about -4;he Yankees. 

The lady expressed the hope that I would have no 
trouble in making everything right when I got to 
Orangeburg. Said she was sorry to have her brother- 
in-law take a prisoner with him when he was going to 
meet his bride. 

Taking my cue from her sympathetic mood, I beg- 
ged her to intercede for me with her brother-in-law. I 
told her I only had verbal permission from my officers 
to leave the command. That the provost marshal 
would not believe my story; that he would hold me 
under arrest. That my officers would be sent on from 
Branchville to the front, and there would be no telling 
how long I would be held as a prisoner in a guard- 
house. That my people, my mother and sisters, would 
be sure to hear of it, and they would be sorely dis- 
tressed. That I would much rather the news went 
home that I was shot than that I had been arrested as 
a deserter. I assured her, with tears in my eyes, on 
the word and honor of a gentleman, that there was 
nothing I so much desired as to get to the front where 
I could fight for my country. 

This last was truth; but oh, the lies I told that lady. 
Was I excusable under the circumstances? Ask some 



214 THE SMOKED YANK. 

moral philosopher. Let him reason it out. To me, 
life was sweet, liberty dear. If conscience is any guide, 
mine at that moment held me guiltless of all wrong. 
A man may talk about conscience while he steals your 
spoons, but I doubt if such honest tears as mine were 
can be made to trickle down his cheeks while he is 
doing that which conscience holds to be wrong. 

Tears came to the lady's eyes, too. She went out on 
the porch. I heard, but cannot recall exactly her words. 
As I stood there listening, it occurred to me that here 
was a sample of that Southern chivalry which I had al- 
ways believed in, but seldom had a glimpse of. He 
tried to refuse. She would not let him. 

"Why, John," she said, "you must let him go. 
Think of his mother and sisters. What would your 
mother and your sisters say? Think of your Maggie, 
John, and this is your wedding day. Would you have 
this boy curse you on your wedding day? Oh, you 
must let him go." Then her arms went around his 
neck, there was one long, resounding kiss, and she 
brought in the gun. 

The soldier followed her, laughing. He said he 
supposed he would have to let me off, as there was no 
use trying to refuse a woman. We all sat down to 
breakfast. That over, the soldier invited me to ride 
with him to where the Branchville road tu'rned off from 
that to Orangeville, which I did. There was no hypoc- 
risy in the thanks I tried to express to the lady of that 
Southern home, as I took her hand at parting. 

At the forks of the road I parted with the young 
soldier, wishing him joy at his wedding, and thanking 



THE SMOKED YANK. 215 

him warmly for his kindness. " Don't think you have 
much cause for thanking me," he said, meaning that to 
his sister-in-law I owed my release. " Well, you have 
both given me more cause for thanks than you are 
aware of," I said, turning from him to conceal the smile 
I coulci not suppress. 

No boy just out of school, no bird just freed from a 
cage, ever whistled or sung with a gayer heart than 
mine, as I went merrily on my way that bright frosty 
morning. 

For a while the road led me to a timbered country, 
but at length I came to where the road was a lane, with 
cultivated fields on each side. Some distance ahead I 
saw plantation houses, and concluded to get by them by 
walking through the corn field on the opposite side. 

Nearing these houses I saw a white man on the 
porch, and perceived at the same time that he was 
watching me. Presently he shouted and motioned to 
me to come to him. I kept on, as though I had neither 
seen or heard. Then he called to some one to loose 
the dogs, and gun in hand, started on the run in my di- 
rection. 

Naturally fleet of foot and long-winded, I was soon 
in the woods, beyond that corn field, and glad to find a 
swamp there. Wet ground at first, then a little water, 
then ankle deep. Straight on I ran, knowing that no 
ordinary white man could keep me in sight, and that 
dogs could not track me through water. When I had 
gone far enough to feel perfectly safe, I climbed into 
some wild vines, where I could rest and be out of the 
water, and there I stayed until dark. 



2i6 THE SMOKED YANK. 

That was a hard night. It rained and was pitch 
dark. I could not see the trees; had to feel for them 
with a stick. I fell over logs, got tangled in vines, 
pricked by thorns and scratched by briars. 

Toward morning, guided by the sound of crowing 
cocks, I got out of the swamp, and found a negro quar- 
ter. Woefully tired, famished for food, wet to the 
skin, with torn and muddy clothes, and bleeding 
wounds, I was surely a pitiable object as I stood by 
the pitch pine fire those trusty darkies built for me. 



CHAPTER XXV. 

I STEAL MULES AND TAKE A RIDE — -A WELL-LAID SCHEME 
" GANG AFT AGLEE " — SOME DANGEROUS FLACES — 
CROSSING THE SALKAHATCHIE. 

That day, January 17, I was furnished with some 
■y j&offte dry clothes, was well warmed and fed, and laid 
away in a fodder house while my shoes and pants were 
repaired. Was considerably disgusted to learn that I 
was only three miles from the place where the man 
took after me in the corn field. I had spent the night 
traveling, in more or less of a circle, in the swamp that 
bordered Cattle Creek. Was now twelve miles south- 
east of Branchville. Desired to cross the Edisto River. 
Heavy rains had swollen all the streams and filled the 
swamps with water. All the streams in that part of 
South Carolina run from northwest to southeast. As I 
was making for Savannah, my route lay across all the 
streams and swamps. Nearly all of the roads run par- 
allel with the streams. The inhabitants of the country 
were in a state of excitement and alarm, apprehending 
an invasion of the state by Sherman's army. Rebel 
soldiers were being collected at Branchville and other 
points, and preparations made to meet the invader. 
The masters feared that their negroes would rise en 
masse, and go to meet their deliverers. Desertion 
from the rebel troops were frequent. The ferries and 
bridges on all important streams were guarded, and 
mounted patrols were upon all the highways. Under 



2i8 THE SMOKED TANK. 

these circumstances it was exceedingly difficult for me 
to pass through the country. Even the negroes, always 
so willing to furnish food, or to travel at night as 
guides, were afraid to stir out by night, lest they be 
caught by the patrols, and killed for example. I spent 
two days and nights trying to find some unguarded 
place where I could cross the Edisto. 

Finally, I met a young negro, who told me there 
was no guard on the bridges that crossed the two Edisto 
Rivers above where they came together. He said the 
water was so deep between the two bridges that no 
guard was necessary. This boy had daring enough for 
anything. He wanted to take me across these bridges, 
which he said he could reach by wading and swimming, 
but as it was ten miles from his home to the nearest 
bridge, he was afraid he could not make the trip and 
get back in one night. 

I suggested that we borrow a couple of his master's 
mules and ride. He was willing to run the risk of being 
caught putting the mules into the stable when he should 
return, but was not willing to risk being caught trying 
to take them out. So about ii o'clock that night, while 
the negro boy was conveniently posted so as to give a 
signal in case of danger, I slippped into the barn and 
brought out a span of mules. 

We had to ride bareback, because the saddles were 
at the house, where they could not be easily obtained. 
I had wondered how this boy expected to pass the pa- 
trol on the road, traveling this way. Usually when I 
traveled with a negro for guide he walked ahead, and 
there was little danger of our meeting any white man 



THE SMOKED TANK. 219 

whom his quick eye or attentive ear did not first dis- 
cover, I asked this boy how we were to get by the pa- 
trol on mules. " Don' you gib yourself no troubble 
'bout dat, young massa; ain't gwine to meet no patrol 
on dat road what I'se gwine to trabble. You stick to 
dat ar mule, and I'se gwine to land you safe on todder 
side o' bofe dem ar Edisto Ribbers." I did stick to the 
mule, and there was little danger of meeting patrols on 
the road he " trabbled." 

It was through fields, over fences, and through by- 
paths in the woods. How he could tell where he was 
going in the dark puzzled me. We were several times 
in water that caused the mules to swim before we 
reached the first bridge, and had to swim in several 
places between the bridges, but he landed me safe 
across both Edistos, and did not leave me until he had 
turned me over to another negro two miles beyond. 

Riding bare-back on a mule was to me a new kind 
of exercise. The parts that rested on the mule were so 
badly excoriated, that for several days I could not walk 
in a natural manner. 

The next night I passed through Midway, and stop- 
ped with a negro who was a coachman for his master, 
and was going to cross the Salkahatchie to bring his 
master home. This river was also guarded. Troops 
under the rebel Hardee, and the cavalry general, 
Wheeler, were making preparations to meet and op- 
pose Sherman, should he attempt to come that way. 
The greatest uncertainty prevailed as to what route 
Sherman would take. The course that seemed to be 
best for me, was to go toward Savannah as rapidly as 



220 THE SMOKED TANK. 

possible, provided I could get through the lines of the 
enemy. 

I anticipated difficulty in getting over the Salka- 
hatchie, for along that stream the rebels were preparing 
to make a stand. Not only bridges and causeways 
were guarded, but there was also a line of pickets close 
enough to be in sight of each other, walking their beats 
all along the stream. When the negro proposed to take 
me in a close carriage through this army of rebels and 
across a guarded bridge and causeway, I thought it a 
good scheme. He had a pass which read: " Pass my 
black boy, Sam, and carriage," and was signed by a 
colonel. We had arranged that in case the carriage 
should be stopped and questions asked, I was to claim 
to be a relative of the colonel on a visit to the family. 
If the guard at the bridge refused to let me over, I was 
to get out and pretend to be waiting for the return of 
the carriage, until I could secede. But " the best laid 
schemes of mice and men gang aft aglee." After wait- 
ing all one day and night for this chance to ride in a 
colonel's coach, it turned out in the morning when we 
were ready to start that one of the ladies of the family 
had concluded to ride over after the colonel. Had I been 
better clad and sufficiently posted as to what regiments 
were camped beyond the river, it would have been fine 
work, and feasible, to have introduced myself to this 
family and secured a ride under the protection of the 
pass. As it was, I had no time for preparation, and 
thought best to try some other plan. 

I remained all that day in the negro quarters where 
tv\^o women were at work carding and spinning wool. 



THE SMOKED YANK. 221 

About noon two of Wheeler's cavalry rode up, hitched 
their horses and came into the house and ordered the 
women to get dinner for them. I had crawled under a 
bed when these men approached the house. One of 
them said he had been up all night and would take a 
nap while the dinner was cooking, so he came into the 
room where I was and lay down on the bed that I was 
under. I did not sleep while I was there. 

As soon as it was dark I resumed my journey, 
keeping the traveled road that led to the river; met a 
good many people, and some on horseback overtook 
and passed me. None of them saw me, however. 

My sense of hearing had become so acute that I 
could hear even the footsteps of a man long before I 
could distinguish his form by starlight, while the gallop 
of a horse, I verily believe I could hear, when listening 
with my ear to the ground, for half a mile. Once, 
while sleeping in the woods in the daytime, I was awa- 
kened by the sound of approaching footsteps, and on 
looking around, saw a negro at least a hundred yards 
away, coming with my dinner. 

I had resolved that night, having become well 
rested, to cover a long distance. I had not gone far 
when I came to where some soldiers had camped by the 
side of the road. I made a long detour in the woods 
to get by them, and when I came to a road, supposed 
it was the same I had been on, and walked until nearly 
morning before finding out that the soldiers were 
camped where two roads crossed, and that the one I 
had taken ran at right angles to the way I wanted to 
go. Toward morning I found a large number of ne- 



222 THE SMOKED YANK. 

groes, men, women and children, sleeping in an 
old unused store building at somebody's corners. 
They had been brought from a plantation near 
Savannah to keep them from running away to Sher- 
man. They told me to cross the Salkahatchie and 
travel down the west side, and I would come to Sher- 
man's men, sure. 

The next night I traveled to within a mile of where 
the rebels, under Hardee, were building fortifications 
and guarding the bridge and causeway that crossed the 
river and the swamp. This was the place the negro 
had proposed to take me over in the carriage. I think 
he called it Brunson's bridge. After hiding during the 
day as usual, I concluded to find some negro who would 
go with me as a guide, before attempting to pass the 
guards and cross the river. 

About 1 1 o'clock that night I entered the cabin of 
an old negro, to whom I had been directed, and sat 
talking with him by the fire, when four or five "John- 
nies" opened the door without knocking, and came in. 
They were from a camp near by. All very young. I 
began at once to ask them what regiment they belonged 
to, what they were doing out so late, and to the im- 
mense delight of the old negro, who was at first badly 
scared, I kept them talking, first one and then another, 
about soldier life and Sherman, until they were ready 
to go, and not one of them thought of asking me where 
I belonged. 

These men wanted to buy chickens and eggs, and 
the old man hastened their departure by telling them 
to come right along with him and he would show them 



THE SMOKED TANK. 323 

a black man who would take them to a plantation 
where there were plenty. 

On his return the old man said the safest way to 
cross the river was to go south to where it spread out, 
and formed what was called Whippey Swamp, and that 
I had better not try it without having some black man, 
who knew the swamp well, for a guide. He then went 
with me several miles, and left me with another negro. 
This man knew of two negroes, who had been brought 
from their master's home near Savannah, and who had 
run away, and were now trying to get back. They were 
now hiding in the woods, waiting for a night dark 
enough to enable them to crawl between the guards 
that were posted all along the edge of the swamp. He 
proposed to put me under their care. 

The next day this man and his wife (they had no 
children) left me locked up in their cabin, and went to 
work in some field, so far away that they did not return 
for dinner. At night the woman came back alone, say- 
ing her husband had gone to find out about the run- 
aways. 

I had eaten supper, and was enioying a pipe by the 
fire, when we were startled by a rapping on the door. 
The woman had locked it by pulling the latch string to 
the inside. In other words, the latch string wasn't out. 
To her question, " Who's da'?" the answer came: " Sol- 
diers, aunty. What you got yor do' fastened fah? 
Hurry up and let us in." She motioned to me to get 
into the bedroom, and she made all the noise she could, 
so that mine might not be heard. When she opened 
the door the two men came in. Said they must have 



224 THE SMOKED TANK. 

some washing done, and despite her protests, saying 
she had worked hard all day, and couldn't possibly do 
it, they proceeded to take off the shirts and drawers 
that she must wash while they sat by the fire in pants 
and coat. They paid no attention whatever to her pro- 
tests; just told her to go right along and do it, and that 
she wouldn't get anything for it either, if she made any 
more fuss about it. 

In the back part of the bedroom there was a kind 
of a window — a square opening in the wall, with aboard 
door hung on leather hinges, and fastened on the in- 
side. I tried to open this and get out, but the door- 
fitted into the frame so that it would not open without 
noise. The woman probably heard the noise, and un- 
derstood what I was trying to do, for she came into the 
bedroom and got a padlock and chain, and proceeded 
to lock the bedroom door from the outside, putting the 
chain through a crack in the partition and hole in the 
door. Under cover of the noise she made I pushed the 
back window open and crawled out. She soon came 
out to put her kettle on for the washing, such work usu- 
ally being done out of doors, and gave a low whistle. 
This I answered, and she came and told me where to 
hide until her husband returned. 

The two soldiers belonged to some general's body- 
guard. The general had put up for the night at the 
white folks' house of the plantation, and the guards 
had camped in the yard. This the negro learned when 
he came back, and also where they were from and all 
about them. When he was ready to start away with 
me we passed along by their camp, and I lit my pipe at 



THE SMOKED YANK. 225 

their fire and talked awhile with them. Stated to them 
that I belonged to one of the regiments that were 
camped up at the bridge and was out after provision. 
Partly because it was my mother tongue and partly by 
practice, I had learned the we'uns and you'ns, the broad 
a's and the no r's until, as this negro and many others 
told me, there was no danger of anyone suspecting me 
of being from the North. 

Accompanied by my negro guide, I walked several 
miles to the cabin of another man who knew where the 
runaways were concealed. There I had to wait while 
the runaways were sent for. 

As I sat by the big log fire which was burning in 
the old-fashioned fireplace, talking to a lot of negroes 
who had gathered there, about the war, the Northern 
army and the proclamation of Lincoln, that freed every 
slave, suddenly and without warning, in walked the 
master. 

He was a tall, slender man with gray hair and long 
gray beard, a typical Southern gentleman. It was so 
late at night that we had not expected such an inter- 
ruption, or a guard would have been placed to give 
warning. I had noticed the black eyes and shining 
white teeth of several little pickaninnies peeping in at 
the cracks of the cabin a little while before, but did not 
apprehend any danger from them. One had gone to 
the big house and told the massa that there was a white 
man in the negro house. 

Here he was, anger flashing from his eyes and 
ready to resent, if not to punish, a violation of a rigidly 
enforced Southern rule. No white man was allowed to 



226 THE SMOKED TANtC. 

enter another negro's quarter without the consent of 
the master. 

Knowing this, I rose instantly, and before the old 
man had begun to vent his ire, I was making an apology. 
" You must excuse me, sir," I said, " for being in your 
negro quarters without your permission. I belong to 

General 's body-guard. We are camped at Mr. 

's plantation. The large army under Hardee 0-- 

near there, have about used up everything on the place, 
and I came down here to see if I could find some chick- 
ens and eggs for my mess. I thought it was too late to 
disturb you, and was waiting here while one of your 
men went to hunt up some provisions for me. I trust, 
sir (the old man had on a blue Yankee overcoat) that 
the color of your coat does not indicate your sentiments. 
If it does, you will have to excuse me from making any 
apology whatever." 

This shot struck home. The old man straightened 
up and eloqently repelled the insinuation. He related 
with pride the sacrifices he had made to defend his 
country against the hired robbers of the black abolition 
ruler. He had sent his children and his grandchildren. 
All of his kith and kin able to bear arms were in the 
confederate armies, where they would spill the last drop 
of their blood rather than let the feet of the ruthless 
invader trample the sacred soil of South Carolina. 
" This coat, sir, was captured in honorable combat, and 
sent to me as a trophy of the war. As such, I am proud 
to wear it." It was easy to keep the old gentleman 
talking. In the meantime, one of the young negroes 
slipped out to warn those who had gone after the run- 



THE SMOKED YANK. 227 

aways, and might be returning, of the situation. When 
the old man had talked his talk out, he invited me to 
go with him into the house and spend the night. Said 
he had a relative there on a visit who was a young man 
and a soldier like myself. An officer of Wheeler's 
cavalry. Thought two soldiers would enjoy visiting 
together. He pressed the invitation in truly chivalrous 
fashion. I regretted very much that I was obliged to 
return as soon as possible to camp, and could not there- 
fore accept. Then he pressed me to just come in and 
have a glass of peach brandy and a cigar. To get 
around that I pleaded great haste and promised to 
come down the next day and call on his relative and 
swap war stories with him. The planter returned to 
his house not seemingly well pleased, and I did not 
linger there to learn the effect his report might have on 
the visiting officer from Wheeler's cavalry. 

I was then taken about two miles and put in charge 
of the two runaway negroes. They had arranged to 
cross the swamp that night. Their preparations were 
all made. They had an axe, some pitch pine torches, 
and had selected a place where there were weeds and 
brush, to cross the beat of the rebel guard. 

We passed the guard and gained the edge of the 
swamp. Here our first difficulty was the thin ice that 
had formed on all of the still water. This was the 
coldest night I had experienced in that state, and the 
only one that I remember being cold enough to freeze 
ice on a stream. 

To break this ice without making sufficient noise 
to alarm the guard, rendered our progress for the 



228 THE SMOKED YANK. 

first two or three hundred yards exceedingly slow. 

When fairly into the swamp, we lit the pine torches. 
Here we found the undergrowth of brush and vines al- 
most impenetrable. The water was from two to four 
feet over that part of the swamp that would have been 
dry ground during the summer season. The streams 
where the current was we •eit-ker had to bridge by cut- 
ting small trees and falling them across the stream. 
There was ice to break wherever there was no current. 
We were soon wet from head to foot, often falling in 
the matted vines and sometimes stepping into deep 
holes. One of the negroes was of middle age, the other 
a mere boy. A hardy man used to exposure can stand 
an hour or so of that kind of work and call it rather 
tough, but a whole night's struggle through thorns and 
briars, on turning logs and slippery poles, sometimes 
breaking ice, sometimes swimming in ice-cold water, 
will try the endurance of the toughest man. The boy's 
courage soon gave out. When we came to a small 
island where there was dry ground he lay down, and 
declared, his limbs shaking and his t?eeth chattering all 
the while, that " he would radda' die right den and da' 
dan to go eny fudda'." He would not be persuaded 
and we could not carry him. The man cut a good, 
withy switch and warmed his jacket. 

It was broad daylight when we got over, so numbed 
and stiffened with cold that we could scarcely move. 
We had kept a torch burning, otherwise we could not 
have built a fire. I thought I never would get warm, 
and my teeth would never cease to chatter, nor my 
body to ache. I stayed by that fire all day, striving in 



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THE SMOKED TANK. 229 

vain to get warm. At night a negro, sent by the run- 
aways, took me to his cabin, and doctored me up with 
pepper tea and hot victuals, then wrapped in quihs and 
hid in a fodder house. I remained that night and the 
next day. I did not deem it prudent to keep in com- 
pany with the runaways, because if captured with them 
I would surely be killed, antl I could not be seen with 
them by any white man without his suspicions being 
aroused. 



CHAPTER XXVI. 

"the girl I LEFT BEHIND ME " — THE GRAND OLD FLAG 
AND THE BOYS IN BLUE — I AM DUBBED " SMOKED 
YANK." 

/^ 

I was now on the west side of th(|) Salkahatchie, 
between thirty and forty miles from Pocotaiago, where 
a portion of Sherman's army was in camp. There were 
no more rivers or swamps in my way and there was a 
well traveled road to follow, but there were swarms of 
rebel cavalry and rebel citizens all around me, watching 
for the approach of Sherman's army, picking up desert- 
ers and moving their slaves and other property to more 
secure places. There were white men on guard at 
every plantation and the negroes were in such a state 
of anxiety and terror, and so suspicious of a white man, 
that I found it almost impossible to communicate with 
them. They seemed afraid to talk with me or help me 
in any way, lest I should turn out to be a spy seeking to 
betray them. 

I was obliged to use the utmost caution and to 
travel only by day because I could get no guide, and if 
I traveled at night I could not tell where or when I 
might run on to the patrols or ambushed guards. 
Wearily and stealthily I crept along the edge of the 
swamp a mile or so from the road, making only ten or 
twelve miles in a day. Often when I could not find 
cotton or fodder in which to hide, I had to shiver with 
cold all night. The last three or four days were the 



THE SMOKED YANK. 231 

most difficult and trying of my journey. I did not get 
food but two or three times and I hardly slept at all, but 
the thought of freedom, now so near, nerved me up, 
and in a measure compensated for lack of food and 
sleep. 

About nine o'clock in the forenoon of February ist, 
I began to hear a rumbling sound which I knew must 
be made by loaded wagons moving on the road. 
Whether they belonged to retreating rebel or an ad- 
vancing Union army, I could not tell, and I dared not 
take the risk of finding out. 

About noon, as I was moving cautiously along, 
peering in all directions from behind one tree before 
slipping to another, suddenly there burst upon my lis- 
tening ears the joyous notes of " The Girl I Left Behind 
Me," played by a full brass band. I knew that there 
was no rebel army with brass band in that vicinity, and 
I started on a full run toward the welcome sound. 

Reader, I can but faintly describe to you the 
kaleidscopic pictures which flashed across my mental 
vision during those supreme moments, as I ran, with 
hope before and fear behind. Home, father, mother, 
brother, sisters, the grand old flag, the boys in blue, 
these for an instant before me, and my feet seemed to 
spurn the passing ground — then, as the deeds of a life- 
time rush together into the memory of a drowning man 
— there rose up every scene that I had witnessed, or 
heard described, of the tortures inflicted on escaped 
prisoners brought back; the tearing of blood-hounds, 
the hanging by the thumbs, the agonies of the stocks; 
these behind, and I would turn in mortal terror, almost 



232 THE SMOKED TANK. 

hearing the halt! halt! of dreaded pursuers. Thus, with 
mingled feelings of joy and fear, I ran on for nearly a 
mile through thick woods. Coming to an opening in 
the woods I climbed on to a fallen tree, and there across 
a field, marching in the road, with band playing and 
colors flying go the boys in blue. I take off my hat and 
try to shout. I cannot. My heart is in my throat. My 
strength is gone. I recline against the limbsof the tree, 
and sob and cry like a child, and wonder whether my 
strength will come back, or whether I must sit there 
helplessly and let that army go by. 

There was a slough in front of me, across that a 
house, and a road leading from the house down the side 
of the field to the road where the army was marching. 
Two men ride up to the house, and as they see me, and 
draw their revolvers, my strength returns. I throw up 
my hands and call to them not to shoot, that I am an 
escaped prisoner. 

These men belonged at the headquarters of Ha- 
zen's division of the Fifteenth Army Corps. One of 
them was an orderly, and the other, Pete McDowell, 
was quartermaster. McDowell was from La Crosse, 
Wisconsin, where one of the companies of my regiment 
was enlisted, and I had no trouble in satisfying him that 
I was what I represented myself to be. They secured 
for me a place to ridej^and I camped that night with 
General Hazen's orderlies. They were all young men, 
about my own- age, and they treated me with great 
kindness. They sat up that night until a late hour lis- 
tening to my account of prison life and of my escape. 
One of them, a bright young man, who was General 



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THE SMOKED TANK. 233 

Hazen's private orderly, and who was nick-named 
Stammy, because he stammered, declared that I had 
earned the garter, and insisted on performing the cere- 
mony of knighthood before I went to bed. He had no- 
ticed my unavailing efforts to remove with soap and 
water the effects of pitch-pine smoke from my hands 
and face, and so, drawing his sword, he delivered an 
impromptu, humorous harangue, slapped me on the 
back with the flat of the blade, and dubbed me " The 
S7iioked Yanky 

I kept no diary from the i8th of January to the ist 
of February, because I lost my pencil and could not get 
another. The morning after reaching the army I 
wrote, " February 2." 

" The army was in motion early this morning. I 
had breakfast — never knew before how much I liked 
coffee — then rode with Stammy, General Hazen's or- 
derly, up to General Sherman's headquarters. I re- 
ported to the adjutant-general. The general was 
standing near, heard me, and took me into his room. 
He seemed very much concerned about the condition 
of the prisoners at Florence. He made notes on a map 
of all that I could tell him about the rebel armies and 
the places where I had crossed the large streams and 
swamps. He said that some ambulances would go back 
to Pocotaligo to-day and that I could go with them and 
go home, or could go with the army to the sea again, and 
then go home. I told him I preferred to remain with 
the army. He called the adjutant and told him to see 
that I was provided for. The adjutant said he would 
get me a horse and arms, and that I could join the es- 



234 ^^^ SMOKED YANK. 

cort. I prefer to remain with the boys at Hazen's 
headquarters with whom I am already acquainted." 

I rode that day with Stammy in a two-horse car- 
riage which he had captured, and was taking along, as 
he said, to give the old man (meaning Hazen) a ride 
once in a while. Stammy was the pet of the division. 
I still wore my rebel jacket, the same that Barrett took 
from me, but which I had recovered before leaving 
Florence. As we rode along every now and then some 
soldier would call out and say, " Hello there, Stammy! 
Where did you get that Johnnie?" Stammy would say, 
" Th-th-is a-a-int n-n-no J-J-Johnnie, th-th-is is a Smo-o- 
ked Yank." In this way he introduced me all along 
the line, and Smoked Yank was the only name I was 
known by in that army. 

Within a few days I secured a horse, a revolver and 
carbine, and began to take part in the great march. My 
regiment was not with Sherman's army, and I was 
therefore a detachment of myself, commanded only by 
myself. I got acquainted with Howard's scouts and 
rode with them whenever they had work to do that I 
cared to take part in, but whether with them, or with 
the common " bummers," I was always at the head of 
one or the other of the columns. The following is a 
sample from my note book: 

" Feb. g. Second Division, 15th Corps, reached the 
south branch of the Edisto to-day. The bridge had 
been partly destroyed. Some logs were piled up on the 
other side forming a kind of breastwork. Myself and 
three others were on the advance. It looked as though 
there might be rebs behind the logs. I left my horse 



THE SMOKED YANK. 235 

and crawled along on the inside of a corn-field fence to 
find out. About eighty yards from the logs I stopped 
behind a clump of china trees. As I lay there on the 
ground watching, I saw a man's head over the logs. I 
was just drawing a bead on him, when about twenty 
rebels arose with a yell and fired at me. The balls 
struck all around me and sent the bark flying from the 
trees. They called out, "Come in you Yank! Come 
in you Yank!" There was enough of the bridge left for 
a man to cross on. I had no notion of coming in. As 
soon as our boys farther back began to fire, the rebs 
dodged down, and I got up and ran through the corn- 
field. They fired on me again, but I was not hit, though 
it was a close call — shall be more careful hereafter." 

The night before the city of Columbia was cap- 
tured, Hazen's division camped near the river opposite 
the city. The rebels shelled us during the night. I 
slept that night near Hazen's tent with my head against 
the body of a large tree. In the morning, before I had 
made my toilet. General Logan rode up to see Hazen. 
As he sat on his horse near my tree, waiting for Hazen 
to dress and come out, a cannon-ball passed through 
the top of the tree cutting off some limbs. Hazen came 
out of his tent, and Logan, who was in a jovial mood, 
with a gesture toward the city, said: "Hail, Columbia, 
happy land, if this town ain't burned, then I'll be 
damned!" 

A little while after I saw Logan again. He had a 
rifled cannon in a road that led to one of the burned 
bridges. When the gunners had the cannon loaded, 
Logan would sight it, then climb on to the high bank 



i36 THE SMOKED YANK. 

beside the road, adjust his field-glass, give the order to 
fire, and watch to see where the ball would strike. If 
I remember rightly, he was aiming at the State House, 
and aiming well, for he would wave his hat and call for 
three cheers for South Carolina after each discharge. 
He was having a high old time. 

When the pontoon bridge was ready, I crossed it 
with Howard's scouts and rode into the city. -We were 
the first into the city, and saw many rebel soldiers, offi- 
cers and men, taking leave of their friends. 

That night the great fire broke out which destroyed 
a large portion of that beautiful capital, and left thou- 
sands of people houseless and homeless. Many of these 
applied for permission to accompany our army when 
we continued our march. They were called refugees, 
and were divided up among the divisions of the 15th 
Corps. General Hazen asked me to take charge of the 
refugee train that was assigned to his division. I did 
so. Ten infantrymen were detailed as guards and for- 
agers and placed under my orders, and I was instructed 
to subsist my command from the commissary depart- 
ment of the enemy. I soon had the infantrymen well 
mounted on captured mules and horses, and while I had 
charge of them, Hazen's refugees did not suffer for 
anything that the state of South Carolina could furnish. 
There were some old men, but the greater portion of 
these refugees were women and children. Among 
those in my train were the wife and two charming 
daughters of a Lieutenant Thompson, who was one of 
the officers at Florence prison at the time I escaped. 

At Fayetteville, N.C., General Sherman issued an 



THE SMOKED YANK, 237 

order requiring all of the refugees and escaped prison- 
ers to go with an infantry regiment down the Cape 
Fear River to Wilmington. I started with the rest, 
supposing that I would have charge of my train as be- 
fore. We traveled until noon and then stopped for din- 
ner. I rode up to the officer who had been placed in 
command and made some inquiries. He informed me 
that the refugees from that time on must forage for 
themselves. I suggested that it would be better to have 
a party of infantry mounted, and undertook to tell him 
how the refugee trains had previously been managed. 
He cut me short, and in a pompous manner ordered me 
to go back where I belonged, saying he would send for 
me when he needed advice. My recollection is, that 
Sherman had sent this officer away from the army be- 
cause his services were not considered indispensable. 
Not caring to serve under such a commander, I rode 
back that night and reported to General Hazen the 
next morning. 

From Fayetteville to Goldsboro, the rebel General 
Johnson was in our front and on our left flank, and 
there was considerable fighting every day. During the 
battle of Bentonsville my desire to see the fighting 
led me too far to the front, and I came near being 
gobbled up by a squad of rebel cavalry that I ran on to 
in some thick woods. Reaching a safe position, con- 
cluded to find General Sherman, so as to see how a 
great commander would act while a battle was in prog- 
ress. I found him and his staff in the yard in front of 
a farm house. The general was walking back and forth 
in the shade of some large trees. When not receiving 



238 THE SMOKED YANJ^. 

messages and sending orders he acted like a very nef- 
vous and greatly excited man. He had a cigar in his 
mouth, and stepping up to an officer who was smoking, 
asked him for a light. The officer handed him his 
cigar. As the general lit his own cigar he seemed to 
be listening to the noise of the battle. Suddenly he 
turned, dropped the officer's cigar on the ground, and 
walked off puffing his own. The officer looked at him 
a moment, then laughed, picked up the cigar and con- 
tinued his smoke. 

When we reached Goldsboro, I learned from Gen- 
eral Hazen that Sherman was going to City Point to 
meet General Grant, and that the army would probably 
remain some time in camp. I concluded to go home. I 
had a fine English fox-hunter mare that I had captured 
on the march. She was the best riding horse I had 
ever ridden, and very handsome. General Sherman's 
adjutant-general had noticed and admired my horse, 
and when I learned that Sherman was about to go to 
City Point, I told the adjutant-general that if he would 
arrange so that I could go home from Goldsboro on the 
first train, that I would make him a present of the fox- 
hunter. He so arranged, and I left Goldsboro on the 
train which took Sherman and some of his staff to New 
Berne. From there I proceeded to Washington, where 
through the influence of the letters provided for me by 
the adjutant-general, I secured at the war department 
without delay, back pay, commutation of rations and 
clothing for the time I was in prison, and transportation 
home. A few days after my strange dream came true, 
except that I met my father first on the hill. 









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